Big Tent, phase II?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Aug 25, 2006

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is supporting Senator Joe Lieberman for re-election, although Lieberman is a Democrat (who, admittedly, lost his state's Democratic primary) running against a Republican challenger.

Why? Because GOP national leaders think the Republican candidate can't win, and Lieberman supports President Bush in his foreign policy.

This reasoning appalls the Republican National Coalition for Life, which notes that Lieberman's foreign-policy record...

pales in significance when you consider how anti-life Joe Lieberman is. He repeatedly opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion, voted to lift President Reagan's Mexico City policy which denies U.S. foreign aid to groups that perform or promote abortions, voted for a resolution that claimed Roe v. Wade was correctly decided, and voted against Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. Lieberman filibustered the constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage. And the list goes on and on.

Still more galling to the RNCL is the advice coming from Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, who has suggested that "the possibility exists for creating a broader and deeper governing party, with Lieberman Democrats welcomed into the Republican fold, just as Scoop Jackson Democrats became Reaganites in the 1980s."

Welcome to the Big Tent Republican Party of the future. Check your principles at the doorflap.