Romney, Paul, Sununu
At the Forward, JJ Goldberg makes the case that Mitt Romney as a weak first and Ron Paul as a strong second add up to bad news for pro-Israel Republicans.
His reasoning: For Romney to keep Paul from bolting and launching a third-party bid -- all but guaranteeing Romney's loss to President Obama -- he needs to defer to some of Paul's positions.
Romney already has said he would vote Paul if he were the candidate.
Now that's hardly a deference to Paul on policy.
And should it come to such a deference, Romney could conceivably nod to Paul policies that have nothing to do with Israel -- smaller government, for instance, or bringing troops home.
But JJ detects something a little ominous in Romney's alliance in New Hampshire with former governor John Sununu, whose Israel antipathy is well known now -- but wasn't so much in 1988:
For those with long memories, it harkened back to the 1988 election, when Sununu was Republican candidate George H.W. Bush’s national campaign manager. Pro-Israel hawks were beating the drum for Bush that year, warning that Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was a threat to Israel because Jesse Jackson was prominent in his party. Bush was Israel’s true friend, they said.
Nobody paid much attention to Sununu until after Election Day, even though the press was reporting some alarming facts about him (I remember, because I wrote the stories). One of the highest-ranking Lebanese Americans in national politics — and the only one then active in Arab-American community affairs — Sununu was also the only one of the 50 governors who refused to sign a 1987 proclamation saluting the 90th anniversary of Zionism and calling on the United Nations to rescind its Zionism-racism resolution. His reasoning was that governors shouldn’t dabble in foreign affairs — though he’d issued proclamations honoring Bastille Day and saluting Polish freedom on Pulaski Day. In 1988 he issued a proclamation honoring the veterans of the U.S.S. Liberty, an American naval vessel mistakenly attacked by Israeli jets in June 1967, causing 34 deaths. Sununu called the attack “vicious and unprovoked.”
Bush’s Jewish supporters insisted Sununu’s views didn’t reflect Bush’s. When word came out that Sununu was to be White House chief of staff, they said he wouldn’t be involved in Middle East policy. They said Bush was a devoted friend of Israel. Then we found out he wasn’t.
We hadn’t seen much of Sununu lately, until Romney went and found him. Or they found each other.
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First, let me take on the fears of Ron Paul influence: Paul would be stupid to run a third-party candidacy, but even if he did, his positions are so extreme that, in my opinion, he may get a miniscule percentage of the vote--not really enough to throw the election to Obama. The more we know about Paul, the more people are going to be revolted by him.
Second, about Sununu: Old news. Yes, we know about Sununu’s positions now, although we didn’t then. That does not mean that Romney will be influenced by him other than the fact that both Romney and Sununu are both former Republican governors of New England states. As for Bush 41’s antipathy for Israel, that’s old news too--it obviously didn’t transfer to Bush 43.
What Goldberg and all of us should be more concerned about is the current occupant of the White House. We know about all his baggage. If Goldberg want to bring up old news, let’s start with Obama’s old pastor. Then we can bring it up to the present with what we know about Obama’s kowtowing to Israel’s enemies and keeping Israel at arm’s length. Whether or not there was old or potential baggage regarding Romney, Bush, and Sununu, I’m less afraid of that than the open baggage our present president has, and it is important to get rid of him and that baggage and worry about the rest later.
It is clear to this 50-year-old observer of the American political scene, and staunch Zionist, that Romney is being offered by the political establishment as the “safe”, status-quo candidate on the matter of israel (and other issues as well). He won’t transfer the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, he won’t release Pollard, he’ll continue the generations-old U.S. State Dept.-led kowtowing to Saudi Arabia, and so on.
He’ll be an improvement over Obama, if he gets in. Obama was the candidate of the “dump Israel” crowd; that tack is proving - surprise! - to not be in America’s interests or bringing about any kind of peace. So, cooler and more moderately anti-semitic heads might - I emphasize might - prevail.
However, the petrodollar-fed dump Israel segment of elite America is more powerful than it has ever been. Their tentacles are very well established in the universities and in the media, the ‘organs of thought control’ in any society.
Open your eyes, everybody, watch the news, ANY news program, read ANY national-level or even most local newspapers: finding reportage or editorial positions favoring Israel is unbelievably hard, isn’t it? With the PARTIAL exceptions of FOX and the WSJ, pretty much EVERY OTHER national-level print or broadcast news medium might as well be Al Jazeera, where Israel is concerned. Mere coincidence, people?
...And so should we be any more surprised that potential or actual Republican candidates that have staked out very high-profile pro-Israel positions over the past three years have been utterly marginalized? Look what happened to Palin, to Cain, and now what is happening to Gingrich. Santorum is in fact as pro-Israel or more so than any of the others, but notice how he largely keeps his mouth shut on that issue? He KNOWS the media would sink him then! Be honest! You all, reading this, know this too!
Yes, one would think and expect that people would see how revolting Paul is and reject him...but isn’t it amazing how the media treats him with kid gloves...the same way they did Obama (and still do)? Pual, the most outrageous anti-semite of the bunch, who openly sides with Iran, is somehow made out to be harmless enough in the public eye so that he gets 23% of the vote in New Hampshire???!!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE, PEOPLE???!!!
Yes, I’d rather see Romney than Obama in the White House. Then instead of an open apologist for Islamists and an equally open adversary of Israel, we’d then go back to pre-Obama duplicity. Some choice...but that is the best we can hope for.
I don’t even hope for that. Dan Sheldon, you are whistling in the dark. With all due modesty, if you are folllowing these comments, I’d ask you to re-read what I wrote above. Things are MUCH WORSE than you think!
I predict this: Ron Paul WILL run third party. Ron Paul could very well get 10% or more of the vote. In these anti-semitic times, you can just about take that to the bank. This will almost CERTAINLY guarantee a victory for Obama. Paul will do this ON PURPOSE, to make sure someone with HIS foreign policy views stays in the White House.
Romney MIGHT be able to run a skillful enough campaign to overcome Paul and beat Obama, but I think the chances are against this.
As things stand now, I’d just about count on Obama getting re-elected, folks. The most inept and corrupt president since WW2, perhaps ever in American history. Thanks to Ron Paul. Just to screw Israel.
What a “patriot”, that Ron Paul is.....
...And people who support him accuse folks like us of being ‘Israel-centric’!!
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david schimel
01/12/12 01:38 PM
I am more afraid of JJ Goldberg than I am of Romney or Sununu.