By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Senator Joe Lieberman announced his retirement this week, thanking his family and reminiscing on his childhood. To many, his decision comes too late in the game for any real satisfaction. Liberals would far rather he’d absented himself during the Bush years when he seemed joined at the hip to highly visible Republican cohorts John McCain and Lindsey Graham, their token Democrat providing aid to a ruthless NeoCon agenda. When I think about Joe, I think about a word we don’t use very often any more: double-cross. Joe double-crossed us, again and again.
Given his record, it’s no wonder that Clueless Joe had to run as an Independent in 2008 in order to keep his senatorial position. According to the jungle drums, Lieberman has given up on politics because the votes are no longer there. Sometimes the milk just sours. The bone he threw in support of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and his eventual but reluctant vote for health care reform, after months of obstruction, weren’t enough to return him to respectability. I, for one, look forward to never having ‘Joementum’ interfere with the passage of progressive legislation again.
Besides, we have plenty of people to replace him now. Despite the enormous, unsustainable amounts of money this nation spends on health care, Republicans still refuse to entertain remediation to our very broken, for-profit medical system. Newly in control of the House, they will do everything they can to kill off last year’s insurance reform. Republican Steve King of Iowa, repeating the newest GOP talking point on FOX News, called ‘Obamacare’ a tumor that must be eliminated; he proposes to do that by starving it of funds. This sounds dire, something that could wound the efficacy of the Affordable Care Act but, in truth, the plan is funded by law and can only be hampered in small increments, a bit at a time. That is what Pubs like House hit-man, Darrell Issa, and others plan to do, hoping to shake public confidence and weaken the coalition of support that brought it to pass in the first place. They intend to tear the legislation apart, clause by pesky clause.