Ex-Senator Lieberman Joins American Enterprise Institute
Former Sen. Joseph Lieberman will join former Sen. Jon Kyl in heading a foreign policy project at the American Enterprise Institute.
“There is an urgent need to rebuild a bipartisan — indeed non-political — consensus for American diplomatic, economic, and military leadership in the world,” Lieberman (I-Conn.) said in a statement issued Monday by AEI, a conservative think tank, announcing the American Internationalism Project.
Lieberman, the vice-presidential nominee on the 2000 Democratic ticket, left the Democrats in 2006 after he lost a primary in his bid for reelection as Connecticut senator, a defeat fueled mostly by grass-roots fury with Lieberman for his strident backing of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.
He was reelected as an Independent and backed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2008 presidential elections, although he continued to caucus with Democrats.
Kyl was a Republican senator from Arizona from 1995 to 2013. He had announced in early 2011 that he would not seek reelection for a fourth term.
In an interview with The Jewish Week in 2011, when asked what he would do after leaving the Senate, Lieberman said he would not become a lobbyist but wanted a continued role in debate on foreign policy issues. “[P]ublic service has been so much a part of my life, including the U.S. Israel relationship, that I’ll always want to be somewhat involved in these issues,” he said.