Debate: Claim vs. Fact
Sometimes there are just so many distortions and outright lies, it’s tough to keep up with the spin. So, it took a few hours, but here is a claim/fact analysis of Senator Lieberman’s angry debate preformance. (full transcript)
Claim #1: Ned Lamont seems just to be running against me, based on my stand on one issue, Iraq.
Fact: Sure, Senator Lieberman is not living in reality when it comes to Iraq, but that’s not all. He was wrong on the Bush/Cheney/Lieberman energy policy. He was wrong on Alito. He was wrong on denying emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault. He is consistently wrong in trade deals. He was wrong on Terri Schiavo. He was wrong to flirt with privatization. He is wrong everytime he shows up on Fox News to trash Democrats as well.
Claim #2: So why don’t you stop running against him and have the courage and honesty to run against me and the facts of my record?
Fact: Courage? Says the Senator taking out petitions to run as an independent as an insurance policy against democracy…
Claim #3: The fact is that I have opposed George Bush on most of the major policy initiatives of his administration, from tax cuts for the rich to privatizing Social Security.
Fact: “Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., is undecided about the concept of using payroll taxes to fund private Social Security accounts, bringing to three the known number of Senate Democrats who have yet to publicly rule out the idea.”—In fact, after tremendous pressure, Senator Lieberman was the LAST Democratic Senator to come out against privatization.
Claim #4: I voted with my Senate Democratic colleagues 90 percent of the time.
Fact: Professional politicians like to point to these scorecards as some type of barometer, but they are flawed. For example, most scorecards point to the final Alito vote as the one they score, when anyone paying attention knows the cloture vote was the one that mattered (Lieberman voted for cloture).
Claim #5: Well, it’s a very good question. And let me say this. My position on Iraq has been clear.
Fact: Alright, that’s fact. It’s been clear, and it’s been wrong.
Claim #6: My opponent is running against me, as you said, on this one issue. And yet even on this one issue, he has not leveled and been consistent with the people of Connecticut. He has taken all sorts of positions.
Fact: Ned has been clear on Iraq from day one. As General Casey and others have said, our very visible military presence is fueling the insurgency. It’s making the situation worse. So our best hope for success is to start bringing the troops home now.
Claim #7: A couple of weeks ago, you took two different positions on the same day. You said you would have voted for John Kerry’s amendment, setting a deadline for withdrawal. Then you said you would not have supported the amendment, and your campaign manager said a third thing.
Fact: Ned has consistently said he would have voted for both the Kerry and Levin amendments. The Time magazine online article Senator Lieberman quoted (presumably his sheet of paper) changed their article to reflect the error in their initial piece.
Claim #8: The situation in Iraq is a lot better, different than it was a year ago. The Iraqis held three elections. They formed a unity government. They are on the way to building a free and independent Iraq. Their military—two-thirds of their military is now ready, on their own, to lead the fight with some logistical backing from the U.S. or stand up on their own totally.
Fact: Progress? The Detroit Free Press, June 12 of 2006.
“The Pentagon has stopped releasing its assessment of the number of Iraqi army units deemed capable of battling insurgents without U.S. military help. [...] The decision to stop making the information public came after reports showed a steady decline in the number of qualified Iraqi units.”
Claim #9: Let me repeat. I’m not for an open-ended commitment to Iraq.
Fact: Senator Lieberman on CNN: “”We may, over the long term, with the consent of the new Iraqi government, establish some permanent bases in Iraq.”
Claim #10 : And what I’m saying to the people of Connecticut, I can do more for you and your families to get something done to make health care affordable, to get universal health insurance, to make America energy independent, to save your jobs and create new ones.
Fact: In 18 years in the U.S. Senate Senator Lieerman has never signed onto a bill that provides universal health care. He voted for the Bush/Cheney energy policy that was little more than a taxpayer give-away, and has never met a trade agreement he didn’t like (CAFTA/NAFTA/Oman, just last week).
Claim #11: Well, of course, the first thing Mr. Bailey would do is try to stop Mr. Lamont from hurting the Democratic Party’s chances of electing a Democratic senator who might help to make a Democratic majority in the Senate, who would help the three Democratic challenging candidates for the House of Representatives, who might help make the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
Fact: Since Mr. Bailey is no longer with us, we’ll have to use his words and not Senator Lieberman’s to best gauge how he would react. And in 1970, when Democratic Senator Dodd left the Democratic Party and ran as an Independent in the general, it was Mr. Bailey who said, “any action like this can’t help but hurt the party.” SOURCE, 1970 NYT .PDF
Fact: Senator Lieberman is holding the party hostage by running as an Independent. The three way race will suck up media coverage, money, and volunteers better used to elect Democrats for Governor, Congress, and other state elected offices.
Fact: Former Democratic Chair George Jepsen said that electing Ned in the primary let’s Democrats speak with “one voice” this November.
Fact: Elected official after elected official both statewide and nationally have said they would support the primary winner.
Claim #12: Why would his wealth be a campaign issue to you? LIEBERMAN: Well, it’s part of who he is. But really, the point is who is he?
Fact: From Senator Lieberman’s book, “In Praise of Public Life” (available for 1 cent on Amazon.com): “There is nothing wrong with going after your opponent’s voting record or any other evidence of negligence in his public life, but digging into his bank account ... when these things have nothing to do with the performance of his public duties-past, present, or future-is wrong.”
Claim #13: Ned voted like a Republican as a Selectman.
Fact: The New Haven Register: “Using obscure votes out of context [such as Lieberman has done in its anti-Lamont ads], however, was something Lieberman himself decried in his book, “In Praise of Public Life,” when he ran successfully against former U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker in 1988.
“One of those ads was technically accurate, but didn’t mention that the tax votes cited were cast seventeen years earlier,” Lieberman wrote at the time of the race against Weicker.
Claim #14: And part of the reality of this campaign, and part of why I opened the option of going on after the primary, is that whereas he said at the beginning, he would only put at most half a million dollars, and he’s now up to 2.5 million.
Fact: Ned has repeatedly challenged Senator Lieberman to accept a spending cap on the campaign. What more really needs to be said? Oh, besides the fact the Senator was off by a million dollars on his figure.
Claim #15: I don’t have that kind of money. I have to work hard for everything that I raise.
Fact: The Senator is probably right on this one. He has to work hard for everything he raises. That’s why corporate lobbyists and political action committees are filling his campaign coffers at break-neck pace.
- by Tim Tagaris | 07/07/06 01:20:00