Summary: the four lead candidates make obeisance to the Israeli lobby. Sanders the exception.
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1 thought on “The next US president comes to AIPAC”
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I read the Arab Digest piece today with great interest. The AIPAC people are living in an alternative universe. I had a conversation with a Legislative Director (the most senior policy position within a congressional office) for a democratic congressman the other day — he said the sense in Congress is that AIPAC bluffed over the nuclear agreement. They ultimately couldn’t stop it and there wasn’t a wholesale insurrection against those members who supported it. There are far fewer — than expected — congressional primary challengers, for example, against those members who in the past had AIPAC support but who broke ranks over the Iran deal.
On the other hand, the conference last weekend shut down traffic for about a 10 x 10 block radius in DC — it was a circus and apparently the number of attendees overflowed the main convention center in the downtown part of the city — a massive facility. Streets cordoned off with police, traffic re-directed, etc. I chatted with a few conference attendees at my local lunch spot (out of curiosity — nowhere near the convention center but they migrated downtown) and they insisted that AIPAC had become ‘too liberal’ and that its core supporters were all democrats.
I find Trump’s foreign policy non-sensical and he is clearly the closest candidate we have to a Joseph McCarthy — Cruz sounds less offensive but espouses effectively the same viewpoints. If anything Cruz is far more aggressive and trigger happy. Ironically Trump waffled on moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv at last year’s ‘Republican Jewish Coalition’ conference and was apparently booed by the crowd. It seems like he has changed his tune somewhat and sees moronic criticisms of Iran as a way of blunting the Cruz charge that Trump is somehow ‘anti-Israel’ or would at least be ‘neutral’ in negotiations with the Palestinians. All of this is unimpressive at best. And can Hillary really be an effective broker on this issue? Probably not.