Senate Dems should send Lieberman packing

S en. Joe “Turncoat” Lieberman is scheduled to speak tomorrow at a closed-door meeting of the Senate Democratic Caucus, explaining his despicable behavior during the presidential campaign.

Lieberman actively campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. At the Republican convention, to the cheers of chickenhawk extremists, Lieberman savaged Barack Obama as being incapable of leading in a time of war.

Sen. Tom Carper, who led Lieberman’s Delaware campaign committee in 2000 when the Connecticut senator was No. 2 on the Democratic ticket, has been making calls to other senators, evidently seeking tough sanctions.

Carper is quoted by The Hill as saying, “There need to be consequences, and they cannot be insignificant.”

Significant sanctions could include dumping Lieberman from his powerful chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and/or other posts. He could also be stripped of his seniority on one or more committees.

It’s likely comeuppance that harsh would cause Lieberman to bolt the party and join Republicans.

Hit the road, jerk, and don’t ya come back no more: Lieberman has his defenders among Senate Democrats. They claim his vote will be needed to overcome inevitable Republican filibusters as the Obama administration stuggles to clean up Bush and congressional Republicans’ many messes.

Lieberman’s disloyal ways center on his unyielding determination to treat any threat to Israel, real or potential, as if, say, Connecticut was about to be occupied by Muslim terrorists.

Israel is an important friend and ally, one the U.S. should remain protective of. But the U.S. should not do that to the extreme of playing into al Qaeda’s hands by occupying Iraq indefinitely. Nor should the U.S. let itself be ground down in Afghanistan the way the Soviets were in the 1980’s.

During the campaign, McCain frivolously promoted provoking all-out war with Iran. That ruinous, unnecessary folly was no doubt music to Lieberman’s ears and a big reason he campaigned so hard for McCain.

Being a Democrat ought to mean something. We don’t want the last big-tent party to exhibit Republican-style lockstep-marching stupidity. Democrats should go on exercising their freedom to differ with majority views. But that can and should be done within certain reasonable bounds.

Lieberman so far exceeded those bounds that he no longer belongs. We hope Senate Democrats show him the door — and that it hits him in the butt on his way out.