{news} "Time To go Joe " web site

[Tim McKee]

Web site collects pledges from those who want Lieberman out
			a.fullstory_linkbar {				color: #333366;				font-size: 10px;				font-family: verdana;				text-decoration: none;			}			a.fullstory_linkbar:hover {				text-decoration: underline;			}		By Don Michak, Journal InquirerMarch 08, 2005Email to a friend  Voice your opinion  A southern California computer engineer has created an Internet site to collect cash pledges that would help pay for a Democratic primary election challenge to U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, whom he calls "a Democrat in name only." J. M. Ivler, a Stamford native living in Los Alamitos, says that after only a week in operation, his Web site, timetogojoe.com, collected about $12,000 from residents of Connecticut and several other states who abhor the three-term senator's generally conservative politics.

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               '); } //-->    "We've got around a year to do it and we're doing an average right now of about $400 to $500 a day," he said Monday, adding that he expects much more money to be pledged as people learn about the site.

Ivler said he wants to help raise $1 million "to help someone put Joe's political career out to pasture."

He vowed that the site "won't take one penny" from the effort and that once a Democrat opponent to Lieberman is listed on the primary ballot, only that candidate would be given access to the pledge list. The roster would be destroyed after the primary, he said.

Ivler's site, which features photographs of Lieberman being warmly embraced by President Bush on the night of the president's January state-of-the-union address, berates Lieberman for "standing shoulder to shoulder with a president who has lied constantly to the American public.'

It attacks the senator for supporting the confirmation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and says Lieberman voted for the war in Iraq and "has never complained about being lied to."

The site saves its most intense criticism, however, for Lieberman's position on the proposed revamping of Social Security, citing news reports that he has been working with Republicans to forge a compromise.

Lieberman has said he refuses to let partisanship interfere with solving problems like the solvency of Social Security, telling The Day of New London this week that while some think Bush would "sink with" his plan to privatize the system, "we are not winning because the victory here is to solve the Social Security problem."

Moreover, Lieberman several days before had joined 41 Democrats in urging the White House to reject private accounts funded with Social Security dollars.

But Ivler, reached at his home Monday, insisted that Lieberman was again undercutting his own party's position, despite polls he said suggest that a majority of Americans don't support a radical restructuring of Social Security.

"There's no need to let this debate on Social Security happen on President Bush's terms," Ivler said. "You don't negotiate when you've already won. You win the battle and make President Bush eat the loss.

"What's happening is the Democrats have won the battle, and once we put the demon of dismantling Social Security to bed, then we can address whether there's any fundamental challenges to the system that have to be addressed," he added.

Ivler described himself as a fiscal conservative first drawn to politics by Ben Wattenberg, a former aide and speech writer to President Lyndon B. Johnson who went on to become an adviser to Sen. Henry Jackson's Democratic presidential campaigns in 1972 and 1976.

Ivler said he has been a lifelong Democrat who has contributed to Democratic causes, helped Democrats win public office, and once even mounted his own unsuccessful campaign for Congress in California.

Ivler also insisted that while he doesn't believe in "purging" by a political party, he feels he can honestly "say this person is a DINO -- or Democrat in name only.''

Ivler also volunteered that while growing up in Stamford he attended the Bi-Cultural Day School in town, a Hebrew Day School he says Lieberman "supposedly supports."

In the first post on his Web site, Ivler also mentioned the school, saying he wanted to do so "before I take the heat and get called anti-Semitic."

"Being Jewish doesn't mean getting behind a fundamentalist Jew when he is wrong," he wrote. "And Joe is wrong!"

Ivler began soliciting pledges about a month after a great deal of Internet chatter that actor and philanthropist Paul Newman was considering a 2006 primary bid against Lieberman, although state party officials told the Journal Inquirer they doubted the 80-year-old Westport resident would make the run.

At the same time, several leading Democrats said they wouldn't be surprised to see Lieberman challenged from the left in a primary.

One even spelled out an obviously well-considered scenario in which a challenger could be bankrolled by thousands of small contributions generated through the Web, much like Howard Dean, the 2004 presidential candidate who's now chairman of the Democratic National Committee.



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