Tuesday, October 27, 2009

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Sullivan passes on a comment posted by a reader of Jonathan Chait's blog on The New Republic that speculates on what the Democratic Party ought to do with Joe Lieberman, who has already come out and said he would join the filibuster against the opt-out public option for healthcare reform. Of course, Connecticut is the US home to the insurance industry (Aetna, The Hartford), so it makes perfect sense.

Money quote:
Presumably, [his no vote on cloture] would give Lieberman the junior seats on, say, the Rules Committee, the Special Committee on Aging, and the Joint Committees on Printing and the Library. Maybe someone on Reid's staff -- or maybe Schumer's, since this is more his style -- can sort through the committee requests, run the numbers, and quietly pass on to Lieberman the list of committees he would be left with if his seniority were reset to zero as of the day of the cloture vote. Then let Joe see if the GOP is willing to kick any of its own members off of the committees he wants in order to make room for him. If he can cut that deal, fine. If not, then Holy Joe can contemplate exactly how to keep sufficient corporate money coming in to his campaign for 2012 if he has to spend the next three years sitting in the back of the room on the crappiest committees in Washington.


What the Democratic Party needs with this guy is anyone's guess. He so often sides with the GOP that he should just stop pretending to be an Independent (basically cementing the loss of his seniority). He lacks the stones to do it, though; he's no Arlen Specter.

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