McCAIN AND LIEBERMAN SITTING IN A TREE...

As I type, the L.A. Times is conducting an online survey of it's readers to see who is favored among the villagers as McCain's running mate. Last time I looked-- I voted for Charlie Crist, a relatively sane Republican... and isn't it about time for the GOP to own up to the fact that they are, after all, the gay party-- Lieberman was ahead, a smidge over fellow religionist loon Mike Huckabee..

Charlie Crist 5.3%
Mitt Romney 18.3%
Mike Huckabee 27.3%
Tim Pawlenty 2.0%
Mark Sanford 2.0%
Kay Bailey Hutchison 3.7%
Rob Portman 1.0%
Joe Lieberman 28.2%
None of the Above 12.3%

This morning Jonathan Martin profiles the close relationship between McCain and Lieberman.

Wherever John McCain goes these days, it seems, Joseph I. Lieberman is there. 

When McCain needed a quick reminder in Jordan last week on how to characterize Islamic radicals in Iraq receiving aid from Iran, Lieberman was there to whisper into his colleague’s ear. A day later in Israel, the Connecticut senator proved equally helpful, stepping in to help McCain clarify the meaning of the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Whether wearing yarmulkes together amid the throngs at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, meeting reporters outside 10 Downing Street in London or sporting matching suit-and-sweater combos at a snowy New Hampshire town hall meeting, the two have been nearly inseparable since Lieberman endorsed McCain last December.

As McCain hopes to wage a campaign that appeals to an independent-minded electorate exasperated by the Bush administration and the political status quo, Lieberman, a former Democratic vice presidential nominee, has become something of a symbolic character witness meant to testify to the Arizonan’s bipartisan approach.

Lieberman, though lost all credibility-- and was rejected by Connecticut Democrats as a Bush Regime rubber stamp-- as he cozied up, along with McCain, to the most detested regime in the history of America. "Besides South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who joined the duo on their overseas trip last week and who enjoys something approaching favorite [gay] nephew status with McCain, no other elected official has taken as visible a role or become such a ubiquitous presence in the McCain campaign as the junior senator from Connecticut."

McCain strategists see great value in the dissident Democrat and promise that Lieberman will play a key role in the general election [similarly to the way Bush used reactionary Democrat Zell Miller in 2004].

“He contradicts the DNC caricature [of McCain],” says Mark Salter, McCain’s closest aide and former chief of staff.

As Democrats seek to portray the Arizona senator as representing a third Bush term, argues Salter, Lieberman’s willingness to back a Republican “exposes that for the emptiness that it is.”

..."I wish I understood it,” laments Steve Rabinowitz, a Democratic strategist [and, obviously, a Hillary Clinton supporter] who stuck by Lieberman in 2006 even after his primary loss to Ned Lamont. “I just don’t know what to make of him anymore. I’m very sad.”

Rabinowitz speculates that Lieberman has entered a nothing-left-to-lose phase and that his endorsement strikes the first notes of a political “swan song.”

Still the de-evolution in Lieberman's politics is better described as a movement from George W. Bush to John W. McBush than in terms of Al Gore's most fatal political mistake. And no one says it better than The Flamingos:



Oh, and Jane Hamsher says it pretty good too.