Yesterday, Mitt Romney held three fundraisers in the Hamptons, the exclusive beach towns known as a playground to super-rich New York City financiers.According to the Los Angeles Times, one event was co-hosted by Daniel Loeb, a hedge-funder who turned against President Obama and bankrolled a neoconservative pressure group [...]]]>
Yesterday, Mitt Romney held three fundraisers in the Hamptons, the exclusive beach towns known as a playground to super-rich New York City financiers.According to the Los Angeles Times, one event was co-hosted by Daniel Loeb, a hedge-funder who turned against President Obama and bankrolled a neoconservative pressure group that called last month for the U.S. to attack Iran. The Los Angeles Times reported:
At Romney’s luncheon with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor at the Creeks, supporters were asked to contribute or raise $25,000 per person for a VIP photo reception. Among the co-hosts were lobbyist Wayne Berman, a former bundler for George W. Bush, as well as financiers Lew Eisenberg and Daniel Loeb.
Loeb supported Obama’s first run for president, raising $200,000 for him in 2008. But, comparing Obama to an abusive spouse to the hedge-fund industry — “[Obama] really loves us and when he beats us, he doesn’t mean it,” he told friends in an e-mail — he turned away from Obama and began supporting partisan, right-wing causes.
Among the beneficiaries of Loeb’s shifting political allegiances was a right-wing pressure group called the Emergency Committee For Israel (ECI). According to FEC filings, Loeb remains the largest single overall donor to ECI’s PAC.
Led by neoconservative don Bill Kristol, ECI is best known for publishing patently dishonest attackson Obama, smear campaigns against its ideological opponents, and attempting to paint the Occupy Wall Street Protests as anti-Semitic (trying to discredit Occupy seems a natural move for a hedge-funder).
Last month, ECI launched a television ad calling on Obama to bomb Iran. Watch it here:
Kristol quickly followed-up on ECI’s pro-war ad with a long article in the Weekly Standard calling for Congress to authorize war with Iran — only the latest in a long line of such calls from Kristol.
Romney’s Iran policy is more difficult to nail down. The presumptive GOP nominee regularly employs militaristic rhetoric toward the Islamic Republic, and many of his top foreign policy advisers often call for war with Iran. But when asked how Romney’s Iran policy would be a change from Obama’s, his campaign has a hard time trying to differentiate.
One wonders, though, how quickly the divide will be bridged now that Romney and Kristol are feeding from the same trough.
]]>The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and the Foreign Policy Institute’s Jamie Fly this weekend penned an article calling on President Obama to ask Congress to authorize military force against Iran. The piece came just days after a Kristol-led pressure groupunveiled a television ad pushing for war.
But Congress [...]]]>
The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and the Foreign Policy Institute’s Jamie Fly this weekend penned an article calling on President Obama to ask Congress to authorize military force against Iran. The piece came just days after a Kristol-led pressure groupunveiled a television ad pushing for war.
But Congress has already backed away from authorizing force and even GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, despite his hawkish advisers, rebuffed the belligerent ask. Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Romney distanced himself from Kristol’s article:
ROMNEY: I don’t believe, at this stage, therefore, if I’m president, that we need to have a war powers approval or a special authorization for military force. The president has that capacity now.
[...W]e cannot survive a course of action which would include a nuclear Iran, and we must be willing to take any and all action. They must — all those actions must be on the table.
Watch the video:
One of Romney’s advisers — John Bolton — has has recently been pushing for war with Iran but outside of Romney’s militaristic rhetoric, his Iran policy is virtually indistinguishable from that laid out by Obama, including the president’s oft-repeated view that all options remain on the table to deal with a potential Iranian nuclear weapon.
And despite Kristol’s insistence that even if Obama doesn’t ask for an authorization for military force, “Congress can act without such a request,” such a move would be moot: Congress, in each chamber in the past month, overwhelming passed bills specifically repudiating the notion of authorizing force. The Senate passed a new round of U.S. sanctions in Iran in a bill that included language explicitly stating, “[N]othing in this Act shall be construed as authorizing the use of force against Iran.” And the house passed the 2013 defense authorization with an amendment stating the same thing.
A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. U.S., U.N. and Israeliintelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.
But that measured take doesn’t satisfy Kristol, who has been at odds with the Romney during the campaign. As editor of the Weekly Standard and head of the Emergency Committee For Israel and Foreign Policy Initiative, Kristol can make a lot of noise but it seems that no one is heeding his advice.
]]>ECI, the partisan “pro-Israel” group set up by Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer and Rachel Abrams (wife of Elliott), [...]]]>
ECI, the partisan “pro-Israel” group set up by Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer and Rachel Abrams (wife of Elliott), sent a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Carl Levin (D-MI), slapping them on the wrists for asking AIPAC to take a public stance on the New START treaty (for it).
Several Jewish groups recently came out in favor of New START because they think a rocky U.S.-Russia relationship is bad for putting pressure on Iran. According to Laura Rozen at Politico, AIPAC has even reportedly been pushing for the treaty behind closed doors (with Republicans, and maybe even successfully).
But ECI, which was birthed at Sarah Palin advisor Randy Scheunemann‘s shop, says that for Schumer and Levin to ask AIPAC to go public with their support of New START is “unSenator-like conduct” — “public bullying,” as the ECI directors put it in the letter.
Jennifer Rubin, the neoconservative blogger who just moved from Commentary — where she worked with now-ECI director Noah Pollak — to the Washington Post, wrote from her new perch that Kristol, Bauer and Abrams “would no doubt claim, the actions of these two senators…would set a dangerous precedent.”
First of all, I’m not exactly sure it’s even sure it’s “unSenator-like conduct.” Aren’t politicians supposed to play politics to make what they think is good public policy?
Secondly, don’t you wonder what a pro-Israel group is doing defending its turf against the evils of the New START if it’s “a matter far outside its expertise and area of concern,” as ECI put it?
Well, the letter has a hedge that says, “needless to say, the Emergency Committee for Israel takes no position” on New START. But, hey, why is the Emergency Committee for Israel weighing in on Senate ethics?
Furthermore, the notion that AIPAC — or other Jewish or Israel lobby groups — shouldn’t support Congressional action (in this case, Senate ratification of a treaty) is ridiculous. For years, groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) worked against Congressional resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide because Turkey was considered a strategic ally of Israel (the support ended when the relationship went icy over the Gaza War of Winter 2008/09).
It’s not as if the legitimacy of the Armenian genocide is exactly within the scope of “pro-Israel” activity. But, before the Israeli-Turkish alliance fell apart, a happy Turkey was good for Israel. Just like how the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) supports New START because a happy Russia makes it easier to confront the “Iranian nuclear threat.”
AIPAC and other Jewish groups also joined the Greek lobby to support a Congressional resolution about Cyprus (also to stick it to Turkey). So this really is business as usual for Israel lobby groups — they play geopolitics in ways they think will be good for Israel.
The mysterious part is why ECI felt compelled to jump into this at all. Was it to protect the purity of “pro-Israel” advocacy? A partisan shot against two powerful Democrats to pry AIPAC away from them? Or could it be because the faltering opposition to New START (which the, needless to say, don’t oppose)? Or was it just to weaken Obama to make room for anti-START Sarah Palin (who was pushed onto the national stage by Kristol)?
What’s funny — though predictable — is the charge of “public bullying” from a group that employs the likes of Kristol, Bauer, Abrams, Pollak and another Scheunemann employee, Michael Goldfarb.
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