Senator Joe Lieberman Watch: Will “Judas Kiss” Sink Lieberman

The Independent: Lieberman’s ‘Judas kiss’ could seal his primary fate

In today’s intense Democratic politics in Connecticut, “The Kiss” does not refer to great works of art. Speak of “The Kiss” and you conjure up an embrace immediately after the President’s State of the Union address in January 2005. The embrace was between George Bush and the state’s junior senator, Joe Lieberman. A better name for it would be the kiss of Judas – or the kiss of death.

Mr Lieberman is one of the Democratic Party’s grandees, a vice-presidential candidate in 2000 who, two years later, ran for President. Today, however, he is in the fight of his life; a senator of 18 years standing who must endure the ignominy of a primary against a dangerous challenger who has built his campaign on his opposition to the war in Iraq.

The candidate himself remembers his brush with Bush slightly differently. “I don’t think he kissed me,” he told Time magazine. “He leaned over, gave me a hug, and said, ‘Thank you for being a patriotic American.'”

But in anti-Bush and anti-war Connecticut, the dispute is academic. Bush’s alleged words only remind voters of Mr Leiberman’s still unwavering support for the invasion of 2003.

The GOP can only hope that Ned Lamont can beat Joe Lieberman in the Democrat primary election in a few weeks. One poll has Ned Lamont behind by only 6 per cent with likely voters (voter turnout in this summer primary election will be low).

Stay tuned for a brutal finish to the Democrat Party eating one of their own….. and then imploding – all brought to you by the left wing “netroots.”