Lieberman and McCain at Israel's Western WallConsortium News - Robert Parry
Sen. Joe Lieberman’s latest threat to scuttle health-care reform – vowing to join a Republican filibuster to block an over-55 buy-in to Medicare, a proposal that he has long championed – is raising questions about his motives. But no one is mentioning the unmentionable, the cause that has come to define Lieberman’s career: Israel.
Is it possible that Lieberman’s obstructionist behavior doesn’t relate to Connecticut’s insurance industry or to his political ego – the two most cited explanations – but rather to a calculation that he can use his leverage on health care to limit the pressure that President Barack Obama can put on Israel to make concessions on a Mideast peace plan?
After all, the more common explanations of Lieberman’s behavior have holes in their logic.
While it is true that Lieberman’s constituent Hartford-based insurance companies fear any government intrusion in their industry, the actual proposals for the Medicare buy-in or the tightly constrained “public option” actually would benefit the industry in the near term.
Those uninsured Americans 55 to 64 are customers whom the insurance industry doesn’t want. They are the part of the uninsured population that is most likely to need medical care, which is why private insurers have driven up the rates so high that these people can’t afford to buy health insurance.
Letting these desperate Americans buy into Medicare wouldn’t cost the health insurance industry much of anything – and it would reduce the moral (and PR) crisis that has led so many Americans to view private insurers as vultures preying on the most vulnerable.
.......Though Lieberman has long been a major recipient of health insurance industry backing, that has never before prevented him from favoring this Medicare buy-in. Only now does Lieberman say that he would join a Republican filibuster to kill the entire bill if his earlier proposal is included........either version actually helps the health insurance industry by siphoning off sick people and thus allowing the industry to corner the market on healthier customers, where the biggest profits lie.
So, Lieberman may not be serving the industry’s best interests by jeopardizing passage of a health reform bill. Not only does the industry stand to pick up tens of millions of new customers who will be compelled to buy insurance – and sometimes with government subsidies – but a decent reform bill also blunts demands for more radical changes.
If Americans grow more furious with the current system – its rising costs and its failure to cover nearly 50 million people – voters might press for a single-payer approach which could eliminate private insurers altogether.
For these reasons, the Lieberman-is-in-the-pocket-of-the-insurance-lobby explanation isn’t entirely convincing.
Another hypothesis is that Lieberman’s behavior on health reform reflects his huge political ego and makes sense if he intends to seek re-election in 2012 as a “centrist” Republican.
However, that political positioning argument doesn’t hold much water either. If Lieberman is blamed for sabotaging health-care reform, he will solidify Democratic hatred of him, and many Republicans will still distrust his liberal positions on social issues like abortion.
...The Israel Factor
Which brings us to Israel, which arguably has become Lieberman’s most treasured priority in his political life.
Mark Vogel, chairman of the pro-Israel National Action Committee, once said, “Joe Lieberman, without exception, no conditions … is the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress. There is nobody who does more on behalf of Israel than Joe Lieberman.”
It was Lieberman’s embrace of neoconservative ideology and his aggressive support for wars against Israel’s Muslim enemies, the likes of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, that led Connecticut Democrats to deny Lieberman the Senate nomination in 2006 and prompted his successful run as an Independent.
Partly because Obama opposed the Iraq War, Lieberman went on the stump for Republican John McCain in 2008, even questioning Obama’s patriotism.
......... Lieberman and the neocons have much in common with Republicans, such as Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, who declared in July that “If we’re able to stop Obama on this [health reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”A broken Obama could be easier to manipulate regarding Mideast peace talks and Iran.
In recent months, Washington’s neocons hectored Obama about escalating the war in Afghanistan and crowed about their success when Obama agreed recently to dispatch 30,000 more troops.
Now, the neocons see their chance to complete Obama’s transformation into a more articulate version of George W. Bush, making Obama a President who can sell their pro-war positions with much more polish and class.
.........If Lieberman succeeds in sinking Obama’s chief domestic priority – health care reform – or waters it down so much that it alienates Obama from his liberal base, Obama may find himself essentially the captive of the neocons...
Lieberman has been careful not to connect his disruptive behavior on health-care reform to his support for Israel, but there can be little doubt that a chastened Obama, either defeated on health care or forced to sign a bill that liberals will view as a betrayal, will have much less political capital to expend in applying pressure on Israel....
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. Full story
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