Joe Lieberman endorses Susan Collins, appears in ad for her in Maine

[dalton99a]

12. "I'm a lifelong Democrat but I put my country first, always"

Former senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut on Tuesday introduced Betsy DeVos at her Senate confirmation hearing for education secretary in the upcoming Trump administration — and in the process he dissed the entire education establishment.

Lieberman — a member of the board of the organization that DeVos founded, the American Federation of Children — talked about DeVos in glowing terms and said she has helped hundreds of thousands of children.

“She is disciplined, organized, knows how to set goals and then develop practical plans to achieve them. She is really a purpose-driven team builder,” he said. He noted that the Department of Education is bigger than anything she — or virtually all of the senators on the panel — had ever run but said she is ready to take on the task.

And then, he said: “I know that some people are questioning her qualifications to be secretary of education, and too many of those questions seem to me to be based on the fact that she doesn’t come from within the education establishment. But honestly I believe that today, that’s one of the most important qualifications you could have for this job.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/17/joe-lieberman-disses-the-entire-education-establishment-at-betsy-devoss-confirmation-hearing/