James Taranto, over at the WSJ's "Best of the Web," recounts Democrat Senator Joseph Lieberman's speech the other night at the annual dinner of the Commentary Fund, a speech given on behalf of John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee.Most interestingly, Lieberman was very tough on his own party's likely nominee, Barack Obama. (As far as we remember, he did not mention, or even allude to, Obama rival Hillary Clinton.) Liberman noted that unlike McCain, and despite Obama's "unity" rhetoric, Obama has no significant record of working across party lines in the Senate.
He described Obama as McGovernlike, a comparison at least one backer of the Illinois Democrat, Rep. Fortney Hillman Stark Jr. of California, has also endorsed: "I think he has captured the imagination of the American public, I think he's responsible for bringing millions of new voters, new Democrats into the party, and I haven't seen that kind of movement among young voters since I first ran and saw McGovern do the same thing in 1972," Stark told the Oakland Tribune last week.
Lieberman cited at length a 1999 National Review article by Norman Podhoretz, in which Podhoretz credited President Clinton with saving Democrats from McGovernism. "I think the Democrats have been pretty thoroughly purged of the McGovernite spirit," Podhoretz wrote. "It pains to me [sic] to admit this, but I would estimate that there is now more isolationist sentiment in Republican than in Democratic ranks." Lieberman argued that in many ways, the 2000 ticket of which he was a part was more hawkish than its Republican counterpart.
Since then--really, since the end of 2002--the Democrats have turned hard to the left on foreign policy, with Lieberman a rare dissenting voice. The Connecticut senator praised President Bush for his Knesset speech last week, and said that Bush's criticism of those who advocate appeasement applies to Obama, whether the president meant it to or not.
In his most devastating criticism, Lieberman noted that Obama favors talks without preconditions with anti-American dictators in North Korea, Venezuela and Iran, while taking an antagonistic approach toward democratic allies in South Korea, Colombia and Iraq, opposing trade deals with the first two and threatening to withdraw U.S. military support from the last...
