Mark,

I've tried several times to post comments to the GOP Bloggers Site over the past 2 or 3 days and keep getting an error about being blocked by a feature to control malicious attacks (paraphrased), so I'll add my comments here.

Gullyborg's comments at the GOP Blogger Site are similar to what I was thinking.

Additionally, I haven't heard anything about a Conservative Republican having a chance to win that seat. If that's the case, I would rather have Lieberman as a Republican, albeit a RINO, than another liberal Democrat.

Although Lieberman would likely vote with the liberals on many issues, the fact that he would be a Republican would add one more Republican to the total when it comes time to determine which party controls the Senate. If Republicans picked up Lieberman, they could afford a break even loss in another state.

AAR

I would welcome Joe to our side, but I think Macker makes a very valid point.

"I would rather see Senator Lieberman remain a Democrat like Zell Miller. This country needs honest Democrats, and although I disagree with most of his stances on the issues, he remains true to his ideals. Also, like Zell, Lieberman never left the Democratic Party...the Democratic Party left him."

The Democrats need more Liebermans and Millers to counteract the wacko neorads who are desperately trying to hijack their party.

Kimberly, I agree with your assessment that the Dems need some intelligent, moderate, rational leaders to remind them of what their party used to represent.

But if that party cannot, will not, nominate anyone the intelligent rational moderates can vote for, then I have an image of an exodus to the right in the voting booths, led perhaps by those same leaders you mentioned.

Which is not a bad thing.

It's just that it is going to take a lot more than a couple of people like Lieberman and Miller to start the pendulum back toward the middle. And I am thinking, as I read posts here by true wingnuts who use the word "we" in talking about the Democratic Party, that it might never recover. I'm thinking that the death spiral they are inducing may not be reversible.

It's interesting to look at the future of the two parties, as the Republicans move toward the middle and the Dems slide off the left end of the spectrum. Long before I heard of anyone else saying it, I was saying that I did not leave the Democratic Party, but it left me.

I do think that the deciding factor is going to be the increasing dependence of the far Left on the rhetoric of hatred. They seem to be consciously targeting a group most parties used to avoid like the plague---the uber-radical, hyper-emotional, emotion-dependent, hate-driven egocentric, sociopathic type of personality, with barely controlled violent tendencies. And as that element in the party increases, I think it is either frightening or disgusting many who still think of themselves as Democrats even though they really don't have a party any more.

I just try to imagine a Janeane Garafolo in the Democratic Party of JFK. Or a Michael Moore. These were the lunatic fringe a few years ago, and now they represent the base. That just can't be good.