His ideology has not changed one bit, as measured by vote ratings. The American Conservative Union scored his conservatism an eight out of 100 in 2008, the same as Maryland's Ben Cardin (Obama scored a more conservative 17). His lifetime conservative rating is 16, and over the past five years he's actually been a slightly more liberal 8.2.
Ratings by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action tell a similar tale, and a University of California at San Diego ranking through the end of July found him to be the 28th most liberal member of the Senate this year, tied with that conservative icon, Daniel Akaka of Hawaii.
Milbank concluded the column with the thought that "purity tests" have already led to GOP disaster:
Republicans, who recently floated a purity test for GOP candidates, know where this road leads: to a 40-member minority in the Senate. If Democrats wish to remain the majority party, they should avoid the loyalty trap. Lieberman may be a monster, but he's their monster.
Milbank called out other liberal accounts for suggesting Lieberman has switched sides ideologically. Among those getting it wrong, Milbank wrote, was Peter Beinart on The Daily Beast, who wrote last month that Lieberman was "morphing from an iconoclast into just another right-wing pol." Then there’s Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, who put Joe’s heart on the Right, so far to the right that he doomed his own chances of being vice president:
He's technically an independent and still votes for some liberal things because he wants to get reelected in 2012. But Joe's heart is with the right.
It has been for a while. Longtime students of sanctimony remember Lieberman kicking Bill Clinton when he was down during the Lewinsky scandal in 1998 and pandering to the Pentagon by supporting the counting of spoiled military ballots in 2000 (helping doom Gore-Lieberman in the recount). His low point came at the GOP convention in 2008. It was one thing to ditch the Democrats and sincerely support his old friend John McCain. But how about his hearty endorsement of Sarah Palin as fully qualified to be president? Now that's conscience.
Alter once again demonstrated that strangely it's a magazine called "Newsweek" that stands shoulder to shoulder with the Maddows and Olbermanns in enforcing a hard party line of liberalism.
[Image from Internetweekly.org]
