Joe LiebermanI heard part of and read the rest of a speech given by Joe Lieberman that hit the proverbial nail on the head in terms of how the political divisions in this country are creating a virtual civil war. I haven’t seen or heard much about this important speech since in was given. Interestingly, it has been pretty much ignored by the old media.

Joe Lieberman was once a prominent democratic party leader. In fact, he was the party’s choice for vice-presidential candidate in the 2000 election. He fell to disfavor by his party when he would not renounce his support of an American victory in the Global War on Terror. He refused to tow the party line and stood on principle. The democratic party not only abandoned their former vice-presidential candidate, they began a vicious campaign to assassinate his character and end his political career. Lieberman responded by changing his political affiliation to Independent and successfully retained his position in the Senate. The people of Connecticut made their voices heard by re-electing the man regardless of his party affiliation.

Lieberman Delivers Major Address on “The Politics of National Security”

In the weeks and months after September 11, Democrats and Republicans put aside our partisan divisions and stood united as Americans. As late as October 2002, a Democratic-controlled Senate voted by a wide bipartisan margin to authorize President Bush to use military force against Saddam Hussein.

As the Iraq war became bogged down in a long and costly insurgency, however, and as President Bush’s approval ratings slipped, Democrats moved in a very different direction—first in the presidential campaign of 2004, where antiwar forces played a decisive role in the Democratic primaries. As you may recall, they also prevailed in Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary last year.

Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.

Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America’s moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there.

Part of the explanation for this, I think, comes back to ideology. For all of our efforts in the 1990s to rehabilitate a strong Democratic foreign policy tradition, anti-war sentiment remains the dominant galvanizing force among a significant segment of the Democratic base.

But another reason for the Democratic flip-flop on foreign policy over the past few years is less substantive. For many Democrats, the guiding conviction in foreign policy isn’t pacifism or isolationism—it is distrust and disdain of Republicans in general, and President Bush in particular.

As I said, he hits the nail on the head. The democrats are still embittered by their near loss in 2000 and just won’t let it go. There have been other close races and other Presidents who have won with less of the popular vote. Clinton got into office because Ross Perot skimmed off enough of the Republican vote to get Clinton into office with 38% of the popular vote. The Republicans didn’t react with the hatred that spent every waking moment scheming of ways to undermine his presidency as the democrats have. This is how our system works. They obviously don’t like that fact.

The part of Lieberman’s speech that struck me the most was this …

But there is something profoundly wrong—something that should trouble all of us—when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.

He eloquently articulates what many of us have found abhorrent in all this. Party before all else, even before national security and the support of our Troops in harms way.

And this …

There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base—even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.

My sense of Joe Lieberman was that he was a man of character, for a politician. When he stood alone against the onslaught from his own party I admired him for standing on principle. My estimation of him has grown. He is putting his country first. He does have courage. He is a statesmen and we need as many of those as we can get.

Now some are talking about a bi-partisan ticket that would include Lieberman as the vice-presidential candidate: Blogs for Bush, William Kristol, Wake Up America

More: Riehl World View, Sister Toldjah, The Astute Blogger, Hot Air, Blue Crab Blvd, Van Der Galien Gazette, Say Anything,

H/t: Memeorandum

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