(Cross-posted from My Left Nutmeg.)
Our favorite senator is this month's Newsmax magazine cover boy, having given an "exclusive" interview to the right wing equivalent of the Weekly World News where bashes George Soros as "anti-American" in between reciting other Administration talking points verbatim and receiving some embarrassingly over-the-top verbal fellatio:
Taking aim at billionaire George Soros, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman calls Soros' views on America "so negative, so critical, and so often anti-American."...
Lieberman says of Soros, "His view of America is so negative. The places he's put his money are, in my opinion, so destructive that it unsettles me."...
Powerful or not, what stands out about Lieberman is his decency. Unlike most politicians, he refuses to engage in partisan bickering to gain political advantage. His courtesy and thoughtfulness, his self-mocking sense of humor, and his adherence to his Jewish faith have given him a glowing image that has helped him throughout his career.
The interview - which is being heavily promoted by the same magazine that ran online ads recently calling Lieberman "America's Senator" - was conducted in the Senator's office by the author of the piece as well as Newsmax editor-in-chief Christopher Ruddy.
Who is Christopher Ruddy? Besides being the author of 1997's classic of investigative journalism The Strange Death of Vincent Foster (which was so crazy even Ann Coulter felt obliged to dismiss it as a "conservative hoax book"), receiving massive financial backing from noted funder of the vast right-wing conspiracy Richard Scaife, and repeatedly running other right-wing smear campaigns against Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ruddy also somehow found the time to donate $12,600 to Lieberman last year during the general election:
RUDDY, CHRISTOPHER
WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33416
NEWSMAX MEDIA/CEO
LIEBERMAN, JOSEPH I (D)
Senate - CT
FRIENDS OF JOE LIEBERMAN
$11,600
general 10/09/06...
LIEBERMAN, JOSEPH I (D)
Senate - CT
FRIENDS OF JOE LIEBERMAN
$1,000
general 08/27/06
(If you'll remember, Scaife also contributed to Connecticut for Lieberman, although his donation was later returned.)
Forget for a second the full-blown lunacy emanating from Joe's mouth nowadays, and consider how embarrassing it is for the state of Connecticut to be represented by a senator who would sell an "exclusive" interview to a right-wing hack like this for $12,600.
I wonder what Connecticut's political reporters think about this? I guess if Mark Davis wanted access like this, he should have just dropped a cool $12k into Joe's campaign coffers as well...
Update: For a much-needed, fact-based counterpoint to the continuous assertion of Lieberman's relevance, don't miss this article by Steve Kornacki in today's New York Observer:
In all, Mr. Lieberman’s "This Week" appearance lasted about 11 minutes, and if anything became clear in that time it’s that his influence over the national political debate is waning – a decline that not many foresaw last November, when Connecticut’s voters returned him to the Senate, prompting talk that a new power-broker, coveted equally by both parties, had been born....
But in 2007, embracing Mr. Lieberman’s intransigence is a decided political liability – evidenced most startlingly by a recent poll that found that even 58 percent of Republicans in Iowa want a troop withdrawal in the next six months. When, as he did on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman uses a national television interview to dust off old attacks on the Democratic Party’s foreign policy credentials while at the same time actually declaring that "the surge is working," it only benefits his former party’s standing with the war-wary public. There are few, if any Democrats, quaking at his threat to endorse a Republican in ’08.