Joe Lieberman Signals Support for Willard Mitt Romney

Joe Lieberman at Brigham Young, Oct 25, 2011

It's difficult to conceive of a more disingenuous, craven, and small-minded man in the modern era of American politics than Sen. Joe Lieberman.

And this designation says much as modern American politics has sunk to levels of depravity, narcissism, and self-conscious lying that would make Joe McCarthy blush.

Yet the name, Joe Lieberman, has descended to the level of Joe McCarthy as Lieberman leaves the political stage after his senate term expires in 2013, and one presumes for now that Lieberman will step down and help—in some manner—a Republican succeed his senate seat amid dropping approval numbers. But there also appears to be bigger plan for Joe: Willard.

Romney has already assemblied foriegn policy and financial backers comprising a virtual who’s who of the Amercan, pro-Likud Party establishment. And the U.S.-Israel Lobby is little more than a GOP Front Group.

ADL - 1994

As for the Chistianite right who think world Jewry is going to hell; and hence once upon of a time were identified by the ADL as assaulting tolerance and pluralism in America: Bygones.

Rather than speculate on what drives Joe Lieberman, or even substantiate why Liar Joe well deserves the McCarthy label [if it isn't clear now, you won't agree], Lieberman's latest mini-crusade is to evoke the religious test clause of the U.S. Constitution in defense of Willard Mitt Romney, to whom the GOP establishment is desperately turning even as Romney inartfully waffles his way around the country to Karl Rove's stage management, in the process managing to make John Kerry appear a man of steel and principle by comparison.

Lieberman thinks he can be an asset to the most powerful GOP political operatives with whom he already works, so his address at Brigham Young University yesterday in which he lent his wisdom on religion in the presidential campaign race signals his role in the 2012 general election.

BYU welcomed U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman to campus Tuesday where he spoke to students in the Marriott Center in a forum address titled 'Faith and the Public Square.'

Sen. Lieberman expressed a special connection to the Mormon faith and Brigham Young University because of the core principles that the university stands for. ...

'America has been from the beginning a faith-based initiative and anybody who tries to separate faith from the public square is doing something unnatural and ultimately bad for our country.'

Lieberman will appeal to religious tolerance in defence of Romney as though we didn't already have enough policy and personal reasons to think Romney would be a horrendous president. It will be a tamed-down variation of the discredited smear that if don't like Israel's human rights records, militarism and bigotry, then you are an anti-Semite. Similarly, if you don't like Romney and Mormonism, then you are a bigot.

But Holy Joe will at least supply some fun as his sanctimonious impersonation of the cartoon character, Snagglepuss [my Jackie says Lieberman sounds just like him, only meaner], brings a chuckle.

By JoAnna Brooks

Yesterday, here at RD, I speculated that the Romney campaign would need to find surrogates who could speak broadly to the issue of religion in the 2012 campaign. After all, Romney told voters in Iowa late last week that he would not answer “misinformation” about Mormonism, nor would he deliver a follow-up to his 2007 address on faith. And candidate Romney is not especially suited to speaking in unscripted ways about sticky personal issues, let alone about the myriad sensationalized aspects of Mormonism. That much is clear.

The first of those surrogates may have now appeared. Yesterday, Senator Joseph Lieberman spoke at Brigham Young University, touching upon the role of religion in the 2012 race.

“The second religious controversy in the 2012 campaign is of course close to BYU,” said Lieberman. “And it is that two members of the Church are running for president. One of them, Governor Romney, a distinguished graduate of this university, may well end up as the Republican nominee. And if Governor Romney is nominated Americans will be challenged again to be true to our founding principles of equality of opportunity and the clear prohibition in the Constitution, Article 6, of a religious test being applied for public office.”