With the
Lieberman Defeat, Rohatyn's DLC is Doomed
by
Nancy Spannaus
The
defeat of the leading Republican Bush-lover in the Democratic Party, Joe
Lieberman, in the Senate Democratic primary in Connecticut on Aug. 8, has
thrown a huge monkeywrench into the efforts of the Felix Rohatyn-funded
Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) to stage a comeback in the runup to
the November Congressional elections. The field is now wide open for the
Democrats to turn to Lyndon LaRouche's leadership, especially as LaRouche
has been the spearhead of the anti-Lieberman drive. Any other course is
going to lead, quite predictably, to a smashing Democratic defeat in
November.
LaRouche representatives in Washington, D.C. are already receiving
congratulations on the Lieberman defeat, much as they did when leading
Republican thug Tom DeLay of Texas was knocked out of politics. The real
question is: Do the Democrats have the guts to follow up?
Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), one of the many leading Democrats who
had endorsed Lieberman prior to the primary, responded to the election
result with his most feisty comments in months. According to the Aug. 10
Boston Globe, Reid said: "But the perception was that he was too
close to George Bush, and this election was, in many respects, a
referendum on the President more than anything else. The results bode well
for Democratic victories in November and our efforts to take the country
in a new direction." Reid said polls show Democrats winning
Republican-held Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Montana, Missouri, and
Rhode Island.
"A lot
of time has gone by and the numbers haven't changed. In actuality, Ohio
has gotten better. Montana has gotten better. And now we have three other
seats we are looking at. We were only looking also at Tennessee and
Arizona. Now we've added Virginia to the mix." Reid said.
Out of
the eight Republican seats Reid mentioned, the Democrats need to win six,
in order to take control of the Senate.
The Lieberman
Stink
Lieberman's loss is a direct reflection of the fact that the
Connecticut electorate saw him as the "kissing cousin" of George W. Bush.
Like the majority of the nation, Connecticut voters are in revulsion
against the brutal, no-win war in Iraq, and the complete lack of action by
the current Administration and Congress on the accelerating economic and
financial collapse. Challenger Ned Lamont's anti-war campaign was a plus
for him, but Lieberman's negatives far outweighed them. Washington sources
tell EIR that when Lieberman began to threaten the party
that he would campaign as an Independent if he lost the primary, he pushed
many over the edge, against him.
Lieberman comes by his thug-like behavior naturally. As LaRouche's
EIR exposed in a series of mass-run offprints back in August
2002, Lieberman got his start in the Senate with the full backing of some
of the most notorious right-wing fascist circles on the planet, including
avowed Carlist William F. Buckley. Buckley not only waged a propaganda
campaign against Lieberman's opponent, Lowell Weicker, in the Senate race
of 1988, but bailed Lieberman out financially by steering him to the Cuban
exile community in Miami. Lieberman maintained the close connections with
the Cuban right wing, at least up through the 2000 Presidential election,
when he was known as "Gore's Man in Little Havana." (See "Fascist
William Buckley Put Joe Lieberman in the Senate," EIR, July
26, 2002.)
Then
there are Lieberman's mob connections, starting with Michael Steinhardt,
the chairman and bankroller of the DLC when it was launched out of Pam
Harriman's "Democrats for the 80s" late in that decade. Steinhardt, the
son of the leading jewel fence for the Meyer Lansky syndicate, ran one of
the filthiest hedge funds on Wall Street during the 1980s and 1990s. After
he shut down his hedge fund in the wake of his company being involved in a
scam over Treasury bonds, Steinhardt emerged as a major player in the
Edgar Bronfman-founded Mega Group.
Steinhardt, who now funds the neo-con New York Sun
newspaper, has continued to be close to Lieberman. The two collaborated in
the infamous September 1998 effort to carry out a coup d'état against the
Clinton Administration, by trying to get President Clinton to resign in
the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair. Indeed, Lieberman is known in some
Washington political circles as the "Senator from Mega," a testament to
his closeness to the circles of Bronfman and Steinhardt.
Indeed,
Lieberman, and his close colleague John McCain, teamed up in 2002 to
demand that President Bush launch an attack on Iraq, and providing
political cover for the Cheney-controlled apparatus of hoked-up
intelligence which was used to intimidate the Senate into approving the
ongoing disastrous war. (See "Knock
Out Lieberman and McCain To Save the Republic," EIR, Aug. 2,
2002.)
Will Cheney's
Support Help?
Lieberman's immediate announcement that he would run as an
Independent against Lamont (who won the primary by a respectable margin of
52 to 48%), has brought him a wave of supportfrom Cheneyac Republicans.
None other than Cheney himself came forward to complain about the
Democrats having "purged" their party, and to assert that Lieberman's
defeat would benefit "al-Qaeda types."
While
Cheney denied that the White House is actually supporting Lieberman in his
"independent" Senate bid, it's probably true. Cheney lies.
There
have been reports from a Lieberman aide, coming through journalist George
Stephanopoulos, that Karl Rove, Bush's master election strategist, has
told Lieberman that he would help him in any way he could. Rove would only
confirm that he called to congratulate Lieberman, but at least one
Republican Senate candidate, Mark Kennedy of Minnesota, has declared that
he will support him.
For his
part, Connecticut Democratic nominee Ned Lamont responded to Lieberman's
attack on him for being "soft on terror" by saying: "Wow, that comment
sounds an awful lot like Vice President Cheney's comment on Wednesday.
Both of them believe our invasion of Iraq has a lot to do with 9/11.
That's a false premise."
Moving Toward
a Solution
For the
Democrats to prevail nationally, however, it will not be enough to just
attack the war, or even Cheney and the pro-war synarchist agents inside
the Democratic Party. The electorate is in a white-hot rage against the
inaction of the Congress, particularly on life-and-death questions of
economics, such as the shutdown of the auto industry. Even more damning is
the fact that LaRouche has put the solution to the crisis on the
tableonly to be shunned and ignored, while the Democrats concentrate on
getting support from DLC moneybags like Felix Rohatyn.
The
LaRouche Youth Movement is concentrating on getting this message out: Are
you going to act on LaRouche's program, or are you going to continue to be
corrupted and bribed by Rohatyn et al.'s money? Not only political careers
are at stake. This is a matter of the survival of the United States.
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