Republican Lite?

A note to correspondent NYC LIBERAL, who often claims that Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is, at best, Republican Lite, if not full blooded Republican. Lieberman, the long time Democrat and one time vice presidential and presidential candidate, lost a primary to anti-war insurgent Ned Lamont, and then ran and won as an Independent. Lieberman continued to caucus with the Democrats and helped to reserve their one vote majority in the Senate.

But that was not good enough for the left wing purists, who continue to scourge Lieberman,especially since he accompanied the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, John McCain, during a recent mid-east trip.

To them, I present the results of a study performed by the esteemed Votemaster, who says:

To start with, it is all blue on top and all red on the bottom (with senators Sanders and Lieberman counting as honorary Democrats since they caucus with the Democrats). With three exceptions, all Republicans are less liberal than the most conservative Democrat, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD). The three exceptions are the two ladies from Maine, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who are strongly pro-choice. If NARAL and abortion were not in the list, they would drop dramatically. The other Republican who floated to the top is Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who, unlike John McCain, really is a maverick.

...

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is quite liberal, more so than the Barbaras (Boxer and Mikulski, both of whom are known as real firebrands). But Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) is the most conservative Democrat, despite the demographics of the two states being pretty similar. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who is often referred to in the blogosphere as a crypto-Republican actually has a more liberal rating than the other senator from Connecticut, Chris Dodd, who ran for President as a liberal.(emphasis mine-TRM)

The full Votemaster report is the one dated April 9,here.