A Call For Lockstep

Harold Meyerson writes a very disingenuous column in today's Washington Post. He expresses dismay and consternation with Joe Lieberman's earlier interview with Davis Broder.

"I know I'm taking a position that is not popular within the party," Lieberman told Broder, "but that is a challenge for the party — whether it will accept diversity of opinion or is on a kind of crusade or jihad of its own to have everybody toe the line. No successful political party has ever done that."

That's a rather stunning assertion. If parties were based on the acceptance of diversity of opinion on the most important issues of the day, they would lack the definition to be parties at all. And the conduct and duration of our involvement in Iraq is, by the measure of every single poll, the No. 1 issue in the minds of the American people — a majority of whom believe that the Bush administration has botched the war about as badly as a war can be botched.

Yes, I would say there is a stunning assertion or two here, but it isn't Lieberman making them. Meyerson is effectively saying you must agree on the important issues or you don't belong in the party. Hello lockstep. Totally false assertion, as a look at the varied stances of many members of Congress both Republican and Democrat. In fact Meyerson himself disproves his own assertion later in the piece. The other stunning assertion is his flat statement that Americans "believe the administration has botched the war about as badly as can be". Hyperbolic at best, it's also just plain wrong. The disapprove/approve wording of the poll questions capture both extremes. One who thinks the war has not been prosecuted hard enough counts the same as one who thinks we should all be singing Kumbaya.

I won't bother disassembling Mr. Meyerson's obvious hack job on Lieberman any further. One presumes he has already begun sporting a Lamont bumper sticker on his car since he's come out with this partisan hit.