Greenwald: Lieberman's Bad Habit--Demonizing Other Democrats

(Daypass needed to read the rest. Worthwhile.)

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/08/08/lieberman/index.html

Demonizing fellow Democrats

The primary challenge to Joe Lieberman was never fueled exclusively, or even primarily, by his support for the Iraq war. That proposition is conclusively proved by the fact that numerous other Senate and House Democrats who voted for the war are not facing similar challenges. The vigor and intensity of the opposition to Lieberman stem not merely from the fact that he shared the president's positions on Iraq and foreign policy generally, but far worse, that he adopted the Bush/Rove political rhetoric on those issues and -- alone among prominent Democrats -- repeatedly wielded that rhetoric as a tool to bash and demonize anyone who opposed Bush's policies.

Lieberman provided a stark reminder of that point Monday night when he made a last-ditch effort to persuade Connecticut voters to allow him to keep his Senate seat:

He said a victory for Lamont will send a message to the country: "In the Democratic Party, there's no room for strong-on-security Dems." He said that would be disastrous for the Democrats. "You can't win in this country," he said, "unless you assure people" that you aren't going to compromise on national security. He said he has backed the war on terror because he never forgets about the "radical Islamic terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 and want to do it again."

As he has done so many times before, Lieberman suggested that anyone who disagrees with him on Iraq -- which happens to be the vast majority of the Democratic Party, as well as the country -- is not a "strong-on-security" Democrat, and that Lamont supporters and those like them want "to compromise on national security."

That is exactly the demonization scheme Karl Rove has exploited to help win two straight national elections and will undoubtedly try this year for a third. By this "reasoning," opponents of the war in Iraq and other Bush policies criticize those policies not because they consider them counterproductive and misguided, but because they are "weak" on defense and want to "compromise national security."

More than anything, that is what accounts for the strong hostility toward Joe Lieberman -- he not only supports Bush's policies on the most critical issues of the day but echoes Bush's most virulent political attacks on Democrats. And he's been doing that for several years now...

Dead on.