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August 10, 2006

Right Wing Joe Spin

By Rob Kall

The right wing echo chamber has come out with their take on the Lieberman defeat-- negatively depicting the Democratic party

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Joe Lieberman's defeat is great news-- for the left and for the Democratic party. And it could easily be said that Lieberman's chumminess with Bush, which was a major part of his downfall, also bodes ill for Bush and Republicans.

But the Spinmeisters on the right are hard at work spinning a different tune-- from Tony Snow to Fox Newscasters to Anne Coulter and RNC chair Ron Mehlman, they put out a uniform echo chamber message.

The right wing talking points included:
-Lamont is a new McGovern.
-Rejecting Lieberman shows democrats are really, not only anti-war but anti-America and Anti-Israel
-Democrats who supported Joe, who are now getting behind Lamont are quick to stop being loyal.
-The Democratic party is moving even further to the extreme, Wacky left.
-This is good for Republicans, because the Democrats are being pushed to the extreme, Libberul left.
-Democrats are less likely to work in a Bi-partisan manner with Republicans

Tony Snow: If you disagree with the extreme left in their party,their going to come after you.

Charles Krauthamer: Lamont only won by 10,000Lieberman will win among Republicans. If he wins among Independents, he will win. If the issue is Iraq, the Dems will win, but in the longer run, the issue is the war on terror.

William Kristol, founnder of the weekly standard: "What drives so many Demo crats crazy about Lieberman is not simply his support for the Iraq war. It's that he's unashamedly pro-American.

There is a political opportunity for the Bush administration if the Democrats reject Lieberman. If he's then unable to win as an independent in November, he would make a fine secretary of defense for the remainder of the Bush years. If his independent candidacy succeeds, it will be a message to Bush that he should forge ahead toward victory in Iraq and elsewhere. Either way, 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. Is it too fanciful to speculate about a 2008 GOP ticket of McCain-Lieberman, or Giuliani-Lieberman, or Romney-Lieberman, or Allen-Lieberman, or Gingrich-Lieberman?"

Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard. : Lieberman was brought in as Gore's VP because he was a hawkish, pro-israel democrat, now they want to get rid of him for that. If Dems come off as Ned Lamonts, with Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the head of NOW there, this is the far left... it hurts the Democrats.

Now, after 9/11 and with Islamic jihadists still threatening America, Democrats are purging the hawkish remnants in their party. That's the meaning of the primary defeat in Connecticut yesterday of Senator Joe Lieberman to Ned Lamont, an antiwar Democrat. Lamont is the epitome of a peace Democrat: force averse, naively trusting in diplomacy, and firmly opposed to a strong national security policy.

The sacking of Lieberman is all the more striking because of his position in the Democratic party. He is not only the most prominent advocate of peace through strength, but also the foremost Democratic champion of Israel. It was because of his national security stance that he was chosen as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000.

The NY Daily News' headline reads "Dems desert boltin' Joe "

Anne Coulter, toxic psycho rightwing- nutjob, "On the bright side, it is now official: Democrats are not merely confused patriots, so blinded by their hatred for President Bush that they cannot see their way to supporting any aspect of the war on terrorism. Would that they were mere opportunistic traitors!
In Tuesday's primary, Connecticut Democrats dumped Joe Lieberman, an 18-year incumbent, because he supports the war on terrorism. This is the same Joe Lieberman who voted against all the Bush tax cuts, against banning same-sex marriage, against banning partial-birth abortion, against the confirmation of Judge Alito, against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in favor of the Kyoto accords. Oh yes, this was also the same Joe Lieberman who was the Democrats' own vice presidential candidate six years ago.

Despite all this, Connecticut Democrats preferred stalwart anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, great-nephew of Corliss Lamont, WASP plutocrat fund-raiser for Stalin. Lamont's main political asset is that he is a walking, breathing argument in favor of a massive inheritance tax. His plan for fighting the terrorists is to enact a single-payer government health plan and universal pre-K education programs. His goal is to unite the "cut" and "run" wings of his party into one glorious coalition.

The Democrats can hold it in for a few years, but eventually the McGovernite face of the Democratic Party reappears.

Ken Mehlman, RNC chair, Lieberman's loss shows "his defeat shows the Democratic Party has descended into an isolationist, defeatist, and "all too often a 'blame America first' party."
only 7.25% of CT voters voted for Lamont, and decided moderates and pro-war positions no longer welcome.

Tim Chapman a writer on conservative Townhall.com, wrote, "In a salute to the Connecticut senator's character, moral fiber and steadfast moderation, Al Gore chose him to be the party's vice presidential candidate. That made sense, as Lieberman enjoyed many positive traits Gore lacked. Lieberman's 2000 nomination proved that the Democratic party still understood that most Americans value moderation over far-left liberalism.

On Tuesday, the Democratic Party discarded that tired old notion by ousting the pro-war, strong-on-national-security Connecticut centrist in favor of an extreme liberal anti-war Democratic challenger: millionaire Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont.

Lamont's candidacy was fueled by the most extreme elements of the Democratic party. Moveon.org, Daily Kos and other elements of the Web savvy liberal "netroots" made defeating Joe Lieberman their number one priority. To them, Lieberman was an unacceptable cancer within a Democratic party they fancy themselves as owning. Tolerance of a Democrat who was committed to finishing the job in Iraq was a non-starter. Nor was it acceptable for Lieberman to be so unabashedly pro-American in his rhetoric about national security."

Cal Thomas "The narrow primary defeat of veteran senator Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary is more than a loss for one man. It is a loss for his party and for the country. It completes the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing.

They used to be "San Francisco Democrats," a phrase coined by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick to describe the party's 1984 convention. But they have now morphed into Taliban Democrats because they are willing to "kill" one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party's kook fringe."

John McIntyre writing on Foxnews.com, comes off pretty close to racist, once you get into his article, titled, "Democrats Move Closer to McGovern's Losing Formula," saying, "Nationally, the images from last night are a disaster for the Democratic Party. Perched behind Lamont during his victory speech were the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, grinning ear to ear, serenaded by the chant of "Bring Them Home, Bring Them Home." For a party that has a profound public relations and substantive problem on national security, these are not exactly the images you want broadcast to the nation."

Dick Cheney, darth Vader clone and VP; "The al-Qaida types clearly are betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task... Lieberman's defeat, he says, "would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today if that's becoming the dominant view of the Democratic Party, the basic, fundamental notion that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we know we won't-- we can't be."

What's all this mean? The Lieberman dump is a major political seismic event. The whole process of dumping Lieberman was started by an activist who gave out hundreds of buttons with a photo of Bush kissing Lieberman. This is all about rejecting Bush, via Lieberman's relationship with Bush.

The Lieberman loss that the right wing is trying desperately to spin as a step towards leftwing extremism is certainly all about the war, and mainstream media couldn't help but mention that now, 60% of Americans oppose the war.

Will the right wing spin stick? Will they be able to paint the Democratic party as extreme left wing, anti war, anti-American, anti-Israel McGovernites?

The mainstream media will help. They spent more time on Joe Lieberman than on Ned Lamont.

The centrist Democrats may help. But the other possibility is that centrist, DLC Democrats will see the writing on the wall and start joining the Democratic team-- rejecting the incompetence driven failure that is Bush's Iraq "project."

The Bush right wing is doing all it can to draw the US into a major war, with Iran an Syria. If Democrats are smart, they'll do all they can to pin the blame for this war on the right wingers who are pushing for it and enabling it, with utter failure to broker a safe peace for Lebanon and Israel.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.


Check out his platform at RobKall.com


He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity


He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com


more detailed bio:


Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.


Rob Kall Wikipedia Page


Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel


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Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.


Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.


To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.


For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.


Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..


To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.


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