Inside Politics

LOSING LIEBERMAN

“Maine Republican Olympia Snowe may have thrown her support behind the Democrats’ health care agenda, but Democrats still need 60 votes to pass the filibuster threshold in the Senate - and though they’ve gained Ms. Snowe, they’re losing Joe Lieberman,” the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel writes at www.opinionjournal.com.

“The Connecticut independent announced [Tuesday] he couldn’t support the health care bill Sen. Max Baucus just passed through his Finance Committee. Mr. Lieberman doesn’t sit on Finance, but his vote was considered one of the 60 needed on the Senate floor. Along with specific gripes - particularly the tax on high-value health plans, hardly popular with Connecticut’s insurance industry - Mr. Lieberman criticizes the bill’s overall size and scope, saying Democrats are trying to do ‘too much’ in a recession. He also complains that it would ‘raise the price of insurance for most of the people in the country.’

“If Mr. Lieberman doesn’t like the bill now, he’s likely to be even less happy after Majority Leader Harry Reid has combined it with Sen. Chris Dodd’s more liberal product. Mr. Lieberman is on record opposing a ‘public option,’ which remains the chief desire of Senate liberals.

“A Lieberman defection on ObamaCare would, of course, send the Netroots around the bend - those ultra-liberal activists who agitated successfully for his defeat in the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary. But Mr. Lieberman, having faced them down to win re-election in the general election, doesn’t seem to much care about their displeasure anymore. Worse for his party’s liberals, his stance might prove an attractive example to many swing-state Democrats who still aren’t sure they want to support such a big government takeover of health care.”

WOE IS ME

“Poor President Obama. Everybody is picking on him. Some people don’t understand how hard his job is. Others are just mean and selfish,” New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin writes.

“That’s the latest White House whine, as though the most powerful man in the world is a victim of sinister domestic forces beyond his reach,” Mr. Goodwin said.

“The woe-is-me complaints suggest the occupant of the Oval Office, Nobel Prize and all, is feeling weak and small.

“Yikes. No wonder the world is ganging up on us.

“The point was driven home [Tuesday] when Russia’s foreign minister told Secretary of StateHillary Rodham Clinton that Russia was not ready to impose tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Shockingly, Clinton reportedly agreed new sanctions were premature.

“Premature? Iran has been violating U.N. resolutions for years and is planning to get nukes and promises to use them.

“What would be the right time to get tougher - when we see a mushroom cloud?

“And sanctions, remember, are the ‘soft power’ the administration prefers, instead of military action, which is so George W. Bush. But suddenly faced with resistance, Washington now finds even sanctions too rough.

“Another report says Palestinians are losing faith in Obama. If true, they join Israelis, meaning Obama has achieved his first Mideast agreement, though not the one he promised.”

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