From the Miami Herald ...

Joe Lieberman, the one-time Democrat who narrowly lost the vice presidency, stumped in South Florida for a Republican presidential candidate this evening, putting his former party on alert: The GOP is after the Jewish vote.

Lieberman told about 200 Republican Jewish activists that he's backing John McCain because his fellow senator and Iraq war hawk best understands the nature of the radical Islamic threat faced by ''our ally Israel'' -- while much of the Democratic Party has forsaken it.

''The Democratic Party, I believe, respectfully, has left the strongest roots of its foreign policy and national security,'' Lieberman said, adding that McCain ``has always believed that Israel is our natural ally, from the beginning of its modern existence to this day in the war against Islamic extremists and terrorists.''