Holding democracy hostage

Paul Begala calls Lieberman a sellout:

"It's journalistic shorthand to note a politician's party identification and state after his or her name. For example: Jane Doe (D-NY). And so Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is identified as (I-CT). But the 'I' does not stand for 'Independent.' It stands for 'Insurance Industry.' "

But the WSJ editorial page cheers him on:

"Bravo, Joe. It's a relief to see at least someone standing up to the Washington rush to rearrange 18% of the U.S. economy without carefully inspecting the cost and the consequences."

At HuffPost, Robert Scheer practically wants Lieberman arrested:

"Is there a more hypocritical figure in American politics than Joe Lieberman? The Connecticut senator declared Tuesday that he would support a filibuster of any health care reform bill that has a public option -- even the version with the 'trigger' compromise accepted by Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe -- because it might cost money. . . .

"This from a senator who, as much as anyone, helped run up the national debt since 9/11 by pushing to raise the military budget to its highest level since World War II. It is a budget inflated by enormous expenditures on high-tech weaponry irrelevant to combating terror, such as the $2-billion-a-piece submarines -- produced in his home state of Connecticut -- that he claimed were needed to combat al-Qaida, a landlocked enemy holed up in caves. Lieberman is worried about the impact of a very limited public option on the debt the same week as he and others in Congress passed a $680-billion defense bill larded with pork of the sort the Connecticut senator has always supported. . . .

"Maybe he can also take some time then to justify his strong support for the government bailout of troubled banking and insurance companies that has tripled the federal deficit this year to $1.4 trillion. Is AIG not now a 'government-run insurance company,' and doesn't the $185 billion of taxpayer money thrown at that sorry enterprise add up to more than twice the yearly cost of the health reform package? . . .

"The surrender by the Democratic leadership to this blackmail by the party's disgraced former vice presidential candidate would be a blow from which the party would not deserve to recover."

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait offers more restrained criticism:

"My read on him is that he's furious with the party, resentful of President Obama (who beat his friend in 2008) and would relish a Democratic catastrophe.

Of course, I can't prove this. But look at Lieberman's reason for why he now says he'll vote to sustain a GOP filibuster of health care reform. . . . It literally makes no sense whatsoever. A public plan does not provide a new entitlement. It just doesn't. It's a different form of providing an entitlement. Nor is it more expensive. In fact, the stronger versions of the public plan would cost less money. Lieberman is just babbling nonsense here.