{news} ACTION: please respond to sleazy "Lieberman Imitates Nader"

[Green Party-CT]

Please respond to this lobbyist garbage:
   
   
   
  letters at cournat.com
   
   
  http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/commentary/hc-commentarymoffett0820.artaug20,0,4479722.story?coll=hc-headlines-commentary 
   
  Lieberman Imitates Nader 



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       -->By TOBY MOFFETT

August 20 2006

Why is it that Joe Lieberman reminds me of Ralph Nader these days?

Is it that both are from Connecticut and spent the 1970s and '80s building progressive credentials as staunch environmental and consumer advocates?

When a group of us, inspired by Ralph, started the Connecticut Citizen Action Group in the early '70s, one of our heroes in public office was Lieberman, then a young state senator. He went on, of course, to lose a U.S. House race in 1980, but bounced back to become a very good attorney general and, in 1988, a U.S. senator. 

Ralph built a national citizen action movement as well as an effective campus-based network of "public interest research groups."

They ran into each other in 2000, Lieberman running with Al Gore as a vice presidential candidate and Nader running against both parties as an independent.

That year, I and a host of other former Nader Raiders built a campaign to try to convince people that a vote for Nader might actually be a vote for Bush.

Lieberman joined a chorus of Democrats who denounced Nader as a man in the process of destroying all the good things he had done.

Now it's Joe who's running as the independent, in a race that clearly has national implications, not because control of the U.S. Senate is likely to be at stake but because Lieberman might help Republicans keep control of the House of Representatives. By staying in the race, he may bring more Republicans to the polls on Election Day, hurting Democratic challengers to U.S. Reps. Rob Simmons, Chris Shays and Nancy Johnson.

Who would have thought 30 years ago that these two Connecticut figures, who accomplished so much for consumers, for civil rights, for protection of the planet, might build legacies like this? Each of them in their own stubborn way might become known as the two people who helped out Bush and his right-wing allies when they most needed it.

Despite pleas from friends and former colleagues, Nader wouldn't even consider withdrawing from the 2000 race. He got more than enough votes in Florida to put the final Bush-Gore tally in doubt.

In 2004, I and many other volunteers built a more effective operation to challenge Nader's presence on the ballot in many states. It was clear to us that Republican operatives were helping him because they wanted him to take votes from Democrats.

That's why Joe so reminds me of Ralph these days. He's ruining what is left of his progressive credentials and doing it with Republican help. Prominent GOP leaders across the country are urging Republicans to support him.

Connecticut's incumbent and endangered Republican members of the House are using Joe's words on terror - that to talk of getting out of Iraq "will strengthen [terrorists] and they will strike again," identical to Bush-Cheney-Rove line - to attack their Democratic challengers. This past week, one of those challengers told me that "there's so much noise around Lieberman/Lamont that we can't get our message out."

Joe may even be helping rejuvenate the Connecticut Republican base, which seems to prefer him over its own candidate, Alan Schlesinger. When have you ever seen a major party almost gleeful that its Senate candidate is sitting at 4 percent in the polls?

For those who want to take one critical lever of power - the House - away from Bush, this is a looming disaster.

Like Nader, Joe will not be talked out of it. He has a lead in the polls. 

He is determined and self-righteous.

Perhaps the next commercial from Democrat Lamont might be a version of the one he used in the primary, in which Joe morphed into Bush. This time, Joe becomes Ralph.

Toby Moffett was a U.S. House member from Connecticut from 1975 to 1982. He is now a lobbyist in Washington and an unpaid adviser to Democrats Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy, who are challenging Republican Reps. Joe Simmons and Nancy Johnson, respectively. 
  Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant 
  
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