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Opinion: Joe Lieberman assails Barack Obama on foreign policy

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Must be something in the air.

Two days after Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, stirred a hornet’s nest with harsh words about Barack Obama, Sen. Joe Lieberman, the party’s 2000 veep nominee, burnished his credentials as a political renegade.

Ferraro has merely suggested she will bolt the party if Obama heads its presidential ticket; Lieberman long ago fervently embraced Republican John McCain’s candidacy. And in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece that appeared today, Lieberman scorched Obama.

After a discourse on the ebb and flow of Democratic foreign policy positions since World War II, Lieberman concludes that -- to his chagrin -- ‘activists have successfully pulled [the party] further to the left than it had been at any point in the last 20 years.’

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Than he gets to the matter of the moment -- lambasting Obama, as McCain has done -- for saying that as president, he would eschew preconditions to meet directly with leaders of anti-American governments. Lieberman also scoffs at Obama’s contention that his stance parallels the negotiating positions of John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan (among others).

Lieberman asserts that it is impossible to imagine either president ‘sitting down unconditionally’ with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The entire commentary can be read here.

Eventually, the Democrats will have a confirmed presidential nominee and that choice will sit down and start seriously vetting a potential running mate. It would seem an additional question is called for: Can you envision someday turning on your party?

-- Don Frederick

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