I just spoke with Connecticut NRO reader Sean Murphy at a Lieberman campaign event at Vito’s Restaurant in Hartford. Murphy shook the Senator’s hand and told him that although he wasn’t a registered Dem, he respected the fact that Lieberman speaks his mind.

I caught up with Murphy after he finished talking with Lieberman. He said he reads the Corner ”all the time,” so I asked him about the “Pro-Joe or No Joe?” debate that has raged all afternoon. He said:

My feeling is that we live in this blue state, and the Republicans don’t have the bench to field a statewide candidate. So even though I disagree with him on 8 out of 10 issues, he’s one of the few guys in politics who speaks his mind. I think the 2000 campaign, when he had to backtrack a little on a few issues like school choice, was the only time I’ve seen him do that. Other than that, he says what he thinks, and I respect that.

He said he “briefly considered” registering Dem to vote for Joe in the primary, but figured it wouldn’t make that much difference in the long run. “What’s funny about the netroots,” he said, “is that they’ve spent so much political capital on this primary, and [Lieberman’s] still going to win the general.”