Senator Lieberman was on MSNBC today defending his buddy John McCain:
CARLSON: former governor Romney has come out as a strong defender of the war in Iraq, senator McCain has said he believes that position has changed that Romney at one point was for a pull-out but changed his mind on that. Are you with that analysis?
SEN. LIEBERMAN: I am totally with john McCain on that analysis. You got to go john McCain on that analysis and you have to go back to the moment and here is a place where Governor Romney plays too much to the political moment if I can be a straight-talker about it. This was April 2007 and things were tough in Iraq at that point. President Bush had decided to change strategies and be a new secretary of defense and a new commanding general Petraeus and send in troops. at that time, my, some of my colleagues here, democrats at capitol hill were saying it is a waste and foolish and the war is lost and we need a timetable to get the troops out of there.
Governor Romney in April of 2007 was asked, do you favor a timetable? and then he did something that, I think that was the point where there are two sides -- either for a timetable to withdraw or retreat and I am afraid create chaos or a victory for al Qaeda or stay with the troops and the surge, and Romney's answer was cute, but dangerous. Of course, I am sure that president Bush and al Maliki are talking about a timetable, but it should be private. He sent a message and I think it a political message to people here in America, but unfortunately the kind of message that would also be heard by al Qaeda over there which is don't worry about the surge, because the Americans are getting ready to get out. At that time john McCain put his entire campaign for president on the political line and did something totally unpopular and said, we cannot abandon our troops in Iraq, and of course, thank god it has worked. Yeah, I think that senator McCain's criticism of Romney is right on target.
I think this whole brouhaha must have helped McCain, and this despite the fact that it looked to be one of those rare moments where McCain's straight talk backfired on him. There's always a lot of talk about how McCain gets a free pass from the media, and yet on this particular issue, the press uniformly questioned the honesty of McCain's assault. And to an extent they were right--McCain had twisted Romney's words a bit. But now everyone's spent a couple days digging through Romney's statements on the war from early 2007 and there's little doubt that he was hedging on the surge at a time when its proponents needed all the help they could get.
And of course, Lieberman makes the perfectly reasonable point that secret timetables stop being so secret when they're discussed on national television. If Romney's intent was to convince al Qaeda they couldn't wait out U.S. forces...I don't see how he achieved that by saying secret timetables would be fine with him. McCain, on the other hand, has made a big show of saying that we may well be in Iraq for the next 100 years. True or not, it sends the right message to our enemies, and it does so at great risk to his own political fortunes.
Romney can't fight McCain over the war and expect to win on the merits--nobody can. But on the economy...
