Lieberman likens McCain to JFK

[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/03/30/art.macjoe0330.ap.jpg caption="Lieberman and McCain recently went on a legislative factfinding trip to the Middle East including a visit to the Western Wall in Israel."]
(CNN) - Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Connecticut, compared presumptive Republican nominee John McCain to a surprising figure on Sunday — Democratic icon John F. Kennedy.

“I'm a Democrat who came to the party in the era of President John F. Kennedy,” Lieberman told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week. ”It's a strange turn of the road when I find among the candidates running this year that the one, in my opinion, closest to the Kennedy legacy, the John F. Kennedy legacy, is John S. McCain.”

The Democrat-turned Independent endorsed McCain in early February, surprising many in the Democratic party. Lieberman, who ran with Al Gore on the Democratic presidential ticket eight years ago, insisted that his views have remained consistent while the Democratic Party changed.

“The Democratic Party today was not the party it was in 2000. It's been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and basically… very, very hyperpartisan. So it pains me,” he said.

A staunch supporter of the Iraq war, Lieberman recently traveled to Baghdad with McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina. Though he commended Hillary Clinton for her vote on declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group, he slammed both Democratic presidential candidates on their foreign policy positions.

“The Democratic candidates have spent most of their time attacking the war in Iraq… they've honestly not done anything substantial to advance our cause in Afghanistan or against Al Qaeda.”

–CNN's Peter Lanier