CRAWFORD, Texas — Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut says he can win reelection as an "independent Democrat." But his primary defeat signaled that the label may be a contradiction in terms: Many Democrats are hungry not for independents but for junkyard-dog fighters who will counter the aggressive tactics they see from the Republican Party and the Bush administration.
That sentiment now suggests that a partisan Washington may become even more divided.
Democrats who watched the pro-Iraq war Lieberman lose may be more inclined to attack President Bush's policies. And Tuesday brought a reminder that Republicans also may be in a mood to reject candidates who don't meet the expectations of the party's most partisan voters. Conservative interest groups targeted and defeated a moderate Republican, Rep. Joe Schwarz of Michigan, for his support of bilingual ballots and more-open immigration laws, among other things.
"Going along to get along isn't acceptable by either party," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic committee that sets strategy for winning House races.
"Having a few good partisans who will take shots makes politics and government better," Emanuel added. "The nomenclature of Washington is that we should all just sing 'Kumbaya.' But there was no oversight of this war, and everybody sang 'Kumbaya,' and everyone's paying dearly for that."
Republicans believe that the Iraq war and broader national security issues will help energize the conservative base. And GOP partisans did not hesitate Wednesday to spin the Lieberman loss to their advantage.
They painted the defeat of Lieberman, the Democrats' 2000 vice presidential nominee who has supported the war, as the latest effort by liberals to reject a strong national defense -- just as the Democratic Party did, Republicans said, in 1972 with the presidential nomination of George S. McGovern.
Vice President Dick Cheney held a rare conference call with reporters to publicly lament seeing "a man like Lieberman pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture in terms of our national security strategy."
And Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman delivered a speech calling Democrats the "Defeatocrat Party," referring to GOP charges that antiwar Democrats are pushing a defeatist approach to Iraq.
