Tuesday, August 22, 2006

And you thought the left was all about "choice"?

Liberals love to fancy themselves as being "pro-choice", so long as the choice isn't related to where your kids go to school, how to spend your own money, how to spend your tax dollars, etc. Well, now in CT, they want to impede your choice of political candidates. From the Washington comPost:
Critics of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's independent run to keep his job attacked on two fronts Monday, with one group asking an elections official to throw him out of the Democratic Party and a former rival calling on state officials to keep his name off the November ballot.

Staffers for the senator from Connecticut, who lost the Aug. 8 Democratic primary to Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont, called both efforts dirty politics. The senator filed as an independent candidate a day after the loss, running under the new Connecticut for Lieberman Party.

A group whose members describe themselves as peace activists asked Sharon Ferrucci, Democratic registrar of voters in New Haven, to remove Lieberman from the party, arguing that he cannot be a Democrat while running under another party's banner.
I don't have a problem with Joe being removed from the Democratic Party, since he isn't running as a Democrat anymore. If he's running in a new party, whether an established third party or a new one, the fact is that while he may be philosophically a Democrat, he's not a technical Democrat anymore.

But getting him removed from the ballot? What could possibly be the reasoning behind that maneuver?
Lieberman, popular among Republicans and unaffiliated voters, led Lamont by 12 percentage points in a recent statewide poll, with Republican Alan Schlesinger far behind.
I see. So the rationale behind preventing ALL voters in CT to have another electoral choice isn't based in principle, but on a profound fear of losing! Thanks for the clarification.

Finally:
John Orman, a Democrat who gave up a challenge to Lieberman last year, argued in complaints filed with the state Monday that the senator should be kept off the Nov. 7 ballot.

Orman, a Fairfield University professor of political science, accused Lieberman of creating "a fake political party" and added: "He's doing anything he can to get his name on the ballot."
As opposed to the more scrupulous Orman, who's doing anything he can to keep Joe's name off the ballot? I'm not familiar with CT state law, so I don't know what possible grounds Orman could argue that a candidate who has collected the required signatures by the required deadline for appearing on the ballot should be excluded...the comPost doesn't tell us. I am, however, familiar with Dems' contempt for the electoral process when it's politically advantageous for them to be so contemptuous.