Lieberman: I'm doing this to poke liberals in the eye with a stick from Open Left - Front Page

 by Adam Bink http://www.openleft.com/diary/16503/lieberman-im-doing-this-to-poke-liberals-in-the-eye-with-a-stick

This is awesome. Via Leshrac55 in QuickHits (originally with NYTimes):

But in the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. He said he worried that the program would lead to financial trouble and contribute to the instability of the existing Medicare program.

And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.

"Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it's the beginning of a road to single-payer," Mr. Lieberman said. "Jacob Hacker, who's a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, 'This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.'"

What pisses me off most about this is that other Senators, like Ben Nelson, do their shtick just so they can go home and say I got the best deal I could, I really stuck it to those liberals. Lieberman, who I have heard many rumors about him not running again in 2012, and wouldn't even be in electoral trouble if he did support the buy-in, and who has supported Medicare buy-in for years, does this because liberals like it too much. Perhaps Howard Fineman is right that he is doing this just to stick it to Markos and Firedoglake and the rest of us out here.

As an organizing discussion I'm sure this will start an interesting conversation over whether, when dealing with Joementum in the future, the Weiners and Hackers of the world should be lying in public and saying the compromise sucks just so he is tricked into being satisfied. On the other hand, the rest of us will then think it sucks too when it doesn't. Sigh.