CT Dem primary: The morning after

The NYTimes got it right (and Portland's newspaper of record didn't) about what the Lieberman loss means: Democrats in Connecticut know that accommodating the Bush administration is not--cannot be--moderation:

The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president’s choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration’s contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.

Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person’s right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative.

When Mr. Lieberman told The Washington Post, “I haven’t changed. Events around me have changed,” he actually put his finger on his political problem.

And this is why the outcome of yesterday's CT primary is important in Portland, Oregon, as it is in Portland, Connecticut--and in Poughkeepsie, Peoria, and Petaluma.

Courtesy of Arivosis, here's the shorter Lieberman campaign message from now until the general election:

The Democratic party has been taken over by extremists who don't remember September 11 and who are soft on national security.

Don't expect to hear much else from Joe during his campaign as a soi-disant "independent;" Take this away from him and he's shooting blanks. But do expect to hear it a lot; expect to hear it on Imus, the 700 Club, and Hannity & Colmes, and expect it to be repeated endlessly by such true defenders of Democratic Party purity as Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Coulter.

There is, of course, a word for Senate candidates who base their campaign on nothing more than attacking the Democratic party: The word is "Republican."

Which brings up this odd rumor reported by George Stephanopoulos:

According to a close Lieberman adviser, the President's political guru, Karl Rove, has reached out to the Lieberman camp with a message straight from the Oval Office: "The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will do."

What I find puzzling about this story is that, from the sound of it, it was leaked from the Lieberman camp.

I can easily imagine Rove's office making the offer, and leaking it, simply to create mischief; and I can imagine a politically and ideologically rudderless Lieberman campaign accepting the offer but learning just enough from last night's thumping to keep the arrangement a secret as long as possible. I mean, when the Pennsylvania GOP rents out the Green Party like a Grange Hall to help get Santorum elected, anything's possible.

But for Joe's own people, less than 24 hours after losing a primary election because he was seen to be far too accommodating to the right-wing extremists running the government, to themselves publicly announce that they're fielding an invitation from Karl "Heart of Darkness" Rove himself to help their campaign . . . why would any Democrat touch Lieberman again without a level 3 hazmat suit?