PowerLine is offended that John McCain allowed Joe Lieberman to make robocalls for him.
Mr. Knott reports the time of the message as 4:23 p.m. and quotes the message as follows (emphasis added):
Hi. This Senator Joe Lieberman. I’m calling for John McCain.
As you may remember I was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000. But this year I’m supporting Republican John McCain for President because he is the person best qualified to lead our country forward. He’s a straight talker who will always do what’s right for our country regardless of partisan politics and he’s the only candidate prepared to be commander-in-chief from day one.
There isn’t a competitive Democratic primary in Michigan this year and all registered voters are able to participate in a Republican primary. So I’m calling today to urge you to vote in the Republican primary on January 15 for Senator John McCain. He’ll break through the partisanship and make our government in Washington work for all the people again.
I have written the McCain campaign to inquire about the accuracy of this report. I cannot vouch for it as of yet. It is consistent with this CBS report of Senator Lieberman campaigning today for Senator McCain in Michigan:
[I]n Ypsilanti, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., joined McCain on the stump and urged independents to vote for his friend.
"This is a tough and close fight here in Michigan here today. But Republicans, and I want to say specifically independents and yes, Democrats……I urge them to come out today and stand for a man who is a great American patriot."
If Mr. Knott’s report is accurate, is there anyone in the Republican Party beside John McCain who thinks this is kosher?
UPDATE: Patrick Hynes responds on behalf of the McCain campaign:
Thanks for reaching out to me. Sen. Lieberman indeed recorded a GOTV phone call, but it mentioned nothing about Democrats voting in the Republican primary and the call was not targeted to Democrats. Sen. Lieberman’s message was of a series of calls from numerous McCain campaign surrogates, which also included Sen. Sam Brownback.
As regular readers no doubt know, I, too, am offended that Joe Lieberman spammed me with robocalls for McCain for the last 4 days.
But what I’m really looking forward to is for Joe Lieberman and John McCain to stop spamming me (or rather, some Republican named Margaret) with robocalls and junk mail. McCain is even doing an event in Washtenaw County, a sure-fire sign he thinks Democrats might put him over the edge again. Though why he believes Lieberman is going to help make that case, I don’t know.
I got a sum total of 5 robocalls from McCain, and all but one featured Lieberman in some significant fashion. Now, McCain’s campaign may claim they’re using Lieberman for all their robocalls. But I got no call from Brownback (whom, frankly, I respect more than JoeMentum, though I loathe him), or anyone else. Nope. In my little 80% Dem performance precinct, I got nothing but calls from JoeMentum.
So if this offends you, PowerLine, I encourage you to rebel against this horrendous hybrid Neocon Independent mixed with Maverick Republican campaign. Really, I absolutely agree with your outrage that the former Democratic Senator from CT is pimping Mr. StraightTalk 100 years in Iraq.