by Marsha B. Cohen
News sites throughout the US — and Israel — are still displaying shock over the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by a Tea Party challenger in Virginia’s June 11 primary. The GOP leader was widely expected to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House of Representatives within the next [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
News sites throughout the US — and Israel — are still displaying shock over the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor by a Tea Party challenger in Virginia’s June 11 primary. The GOP leader was widely expected to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House of Representatives within the next 3 years; hardly anyone predicted his loss to the political newcomer, Dave Brat. Cantor is the first Majority Leader since 1899 to fail renomination by his party.
Cantor’s defeat will have widespread repercussions for US domestic politics, epitomizing the growing fissure in the Republican party between mainstream center-right Republicans and the Tea Party. Cantor himself danced awkwardly between the two, blurring their boundary. But nothing in Cantor’s stated positions or House votes on social and economic issues distinguishes him from other conservative Republicans.
Cantor was the sole Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives during his 7 terms in office, putting him on the very short list of the Jewish members of Congress who have found a political home within the GOP. There are currently no other Republican Jews in the Senate, so Cantor’s departure from the House will mean that there won’t be a single Jewish Republican in either chamber of Congress. In the 113th Congress, 21 Democrats in the House and 11 in the Senate are Jewish, as is 1 Independent senator. This will be rather awkward for the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), which has not only been arguing for three decades that American Jews are abandoning their traditional loyalty to the Democratic party and increasingly identifying as Republican, but also that Jewish interests are better served by Republicans. Cantor was the RJC’s poster boy.
Indeed, here’s RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks statement on Cantor’s resounding defeat:
We are disappointed that our friend Eric Cantor lost his primary race tonight, but we are proud of his many, many accomplishments in Congress…Eric has been an important pro-Israel voice in the House and a leader on security issues, including Iran sanctions. We deeply appreciate his efforts to keep our country secure and to support our allies around the world.
Although support for pro-Israel and anti-Iran legislation has been overwhelmingly bipartisan, Cantor has played a unique role on the GOP side of the aisle. Alexander Burns of Politico points out:
…with Cantor’s defeat, there’s no longer a point man to help organize trips to Israel for junior GOP lawmakers, as Cantor routinely did. Jewish nonprofits and advocacy groups have no other natural person in leadership to look to for a sympathetic ear. No other Republican lawmaker can claim to have precisely the same relationship with gaming billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a primary benefactor of both the Republican Party and the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Cantor reportedly spent more than $5 million on his re-election campaign, while his opponent, an Economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, spent only $122,000. With big bucks backing him, Cantor seemed to have little to fear from a political novice supported by the Tea Party. “Brat’s campaign portrayed Cantor as a creature of Washington and an ally of special interests, particularly those representing the financial industry,” writes Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Cantor’s top three campaign contributors for the 2014 cycle were the Blackstone Group, Scoggin Capital Management, and Goldman Sachs.
The New Jersey based pro-Israel political action group NORPAC was also among the major contributors to Cantor’s campaign committee, though Cohn seems to have overlooked this. Ranking #9 on Cantor’s list of top donors, NORPAC had bundled $24,560 from pro-Cantor contributors in the 2014 election cycle, about $2000 less than Goldman Sachs’ $26,600.
AIPAC, the much larger and better known pro-Israel lobbying group, does not donate to candidates or bundle campaign contributions. But the campaign contributions of AIPAC’s presidents and individual activists can be documented, and they can serve as a bellwether of AIPAC’s organizational support. Until recently, AIPAC presidents personally contributed mostly to pro-Israel Democrats running in national elections, Jewish or not, and to the small number of Jewish Republicans then in the House and Senate. While AIPAC has tended to favor incumbents, it has also supported the challengers of candidates running for re-election whose positions were deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel. Since joining AIPAC ‘s Board roughly a decade ago, Michael Kassen has been extending his own campaign contributions to some of the most conservative Republican members of Congress — including Ed Royce, Virginia Foxx, and Ted Cruz — whose domestic policies are sharply at odds with those held by center-to-liberal Jewish Americans. Kassen became president of the organization in 2012 and AIPAC’s Chairman of the Board in 2014.
In a twist of irony, by contributing to the Tea Party’s increasing hold on Congress — as long as candidates’ stated support for Israel was loud and clear — pro-Israel donors like Kassen may have inadvertently contributed to a political climate conducive to the defeat of their single greatest success story, Eric Cantor.
This article was first published by LobeLog.
Photo: Rep. Eric Cantor shakes President Barack Obama’s hand at the conclusion of a bipartisan Congressional leadership meeting in the Oval Office Private Dining Room on Nov. 10, 2013. Credit: White House Photo by Pete Souza
]]>The revolving door between government and industry is nothing new. Government regulators get jobs in related industries when they retire; military officers accept positions with defense contractors. Former members of Congress have also accepted positions in business and industry, often as lobbyists, after tiring of office or being voted out.
But [...]]]>
The revolving door between government and industry is nothing new. Government regulators get jobs in related industries when they retire; military officers accept positions with defense contractors. Former members of Congress have also accepted positions in business and industry, often as lobbyists, after tiring of office or being voted out.
But there seems to be a new and somewhat unexpected trend among members of Congress: some are stepping down from elected office before their term is complete without a scandal or personal circumstances prompting their resignation.
Jim DeMint became the third member of Congress in just over three years to give up elected office to work for a think tank when he announced on Dec. 6 that he has accepted the position as head of the Heritage Foundation.
Midway into his seventh term representing Florida’s heavily Democratic 19th congressional district, self-described “fire breathing liberal” Robert Wexler announced in October 2009 that he would be giving up the House seat he’s held since 1996 to become Executive Director of the Daniel S. Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation. Not quite a year and a half later, nine-term California Democrat Jane Harman stepped down from her House seat to become the first woman President and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson Institute.
DeMint, founder of the Tea Party caucus, is the first Republican and sitting senator to relinquish his elected office in order to head a think tank. The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial board has much in common with Heritage Foundation ideology, explains the impetus behind DeMint’s career change:
Sen. DeMint said he is taking the Heritage job because he sees it as a vehicle to popularize conservative ideas in a way that connects with a broader public. “This is an urgent time,” the senator said, “because we saw in the last election we were not able to communicate conservative ideas that win elections.” Mr. DeMint, who was a market researcher before he entered politics, said he plans to take the Heritage Foundation’s traditional research plus that of think tanks at the state level and “translate those policy papers into real-life demonstrations of things that work.”
While DeMint’s new salary has not been publicly disclosed, his predecessor Ed Feulner received $1,025,922 in 2010 according to the Heritage Foundation’s IRS filing for that year. The filing also indicates that Feulner received a base salary of $477,907, a bonus of $535,300, plus deferred and non-taxable compensation. Wexler openly stated that financial considerations played a role in his decision to take up a think tank post. DeMint has made no such admission, although the Los Angeles Times has pointed out that DeMint is one of the less wealthy members of Congress.
Interestingly, although the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) recent presidents overwhelmingly favor pro-Israel Democrats, DeMint has also received political contributions from AIPAC’s current president, Michael Kassen.
Since its founding in 1973, Heritage’s “think” has always been subordinate to its “tank.” Its Board is a Pandora’s box of political has-beens from the Reagan and Bush years, such as Edwin Meese, and some very rich men like Richard Scaife (a Vice Chairman who Robert Kaiser and Ira Chenoy dubbed the “funding father of the right”) and whose individual largesse, however generous, now pales in comparison to the $80 million annually that Heritage is able to rake in.
Hawkish and hardline (albeit vague) on foreign policy issues, the Heritage Foundation presents the Middle East — particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — relations with the Arab world and the Iranian nuclear threat, through an often warped prism of US “national security.”
While the Washington Post laments that “the intellectualism that was once the Heritage hallmark has become somewhat suspect in an era in which the insurgent passion of the tea party sets the terms of political activism,” Jacob Weisberg’s astute observations a dozen years ago are still timely and even more on point:
Because of its combat mentality, Heritage has never been a place with very high standards. Like other conservative outfits, it loves the lingo of academic life. Its hallways are cluttered with endowed chairs, visiting fellows, and distinguished scholars. The conceit here is that as a PC Dark Age has overcome the universities, conservative think tanks have become the refuge of thought and learning. At Heritage in particular, this is a laugh. AEI and the Manhattan Institute frequently produce stimulating books and studies and occasionally arrive at unexpected positions. Even the more dogmatic Cato Institute has cultivated a reputation for rigorous research and analysis from a libertarian point of view. Heritage, however, is essentially a propaganda mill.
To counter this image, Heritage has been attempting to cultivate a new generation of Fellows — aspiring pundits, interns, bloggers and twitterati — who spread Heritage talking points and sound bytes for the right-wing media from policy papers that could be mistaken for actual studies.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Heritage Foundation is not permitted to engage in lobbying. When its “experts” testify before Congress, they are always careful to preface their remarks with the disclaimer “The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.” Briefing papers and other literature intended to influence policy contain the disclaimer, “Nothing written here is to be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress.” This, Weisberg pointed out, “is an evident absurdity. Heritage exists to aid and hinder legislation before Congress and often boasts about doing so.”
The creation of Heritage Action for America (HAFA) in 2010, a 501(c)(4), was designed to sidestep such restrictions entirely. CEO Michael Needham explained that HAFA would provide “heat” while Heritage itself would continue to provide “light.” Not surprisingly, DeMint received a 99% rating from HAFA. Placing him in the top slot may mean even more “fangs for the Conservative beast“.
Commenting on DeMint’s leaving the Senate, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell disclosed, perhaps inadvertently, his own close ties to the Heritage Foundation. “We’re sorry to see Jim go. He’s had a distinguished career,” McConnell told Politico. “My wife [Elaine Chao] is a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation. She’ll be reporting to him.”
- Dr. Marsha B. Cohen is an independent scholar, news analyst, writer and lecturer in Miami, FL specializing in Israeli-Iranian relations. An Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Florida International University for over a decade, she now writes and lectures in a variety of venues on the role of religion in politics and world affairs.
Unfortunately, so far he’s been right, as war skeptics in both parties have proved unwilling to speak forcefully against Obama’s expansion of the drone war. Some Democrats seem to have made an opportunistic calculation that Predators and Reapers give the administration an opportunity to look tough and claim terrorist scalps at minimal political risk, while the murmurings of discontent over Afghanistan and Libya among Republicans — particularly visible in Monday’s primary debate — have not translated into any vocal criticism of the drone war. As long as American soldiers aren’t on the ground and taking casualties, there seems to be no appetite even among relative doves and anti-interventionists in Congress to criticize the administration on this issue.
This is a shame, because Obama’s expansion of drone warfare is extremely problematic both morally and strategically and deserves to be more publicly debated. The administration would like the public to believe that drone strikes are surgical operations targeting terrorist leaders based on surefire intelligence, and that civilian casualties are the exception rather than the rule. While the sheer number of reported civilian casualties and “high-value targets” who have been announced dead only to reappear suggest that this is a wildly optimistic picture, it’s difficult to tell just how wild — since the amount of reliable information that makes it back to the U.S. media is low and the administration has both the ability and the incentive to euphemize the civilian cost of the drone war. (Muhammad Idrees Ahmad has an important piece examining what he terms the “magic realism” of the body count numbers coming out of Afghanistan and Pakistan.)
And while the short-term domestic costs of the drone war for Obama are virtually nil, the long-term international costs are likely to be far greater. In the wake of the Arab Spring, it’s been grimly ironic these past few months to watch various Beltway pundits earnestly debating how the U.S. can “get on the side of the protesters” while having nothing whatsoever to say about the drone war. It only stands to reason, however, that the U.S. will continue to have trouble demonstrating its good intentions to the Muslim and Arab worlds so long as its primary instrument of foreign policy is a technology that seems more appropriate to the George Lucas’s Galactic Empire. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the only prominent pundits to question the use of drones have been counterinsurgency gurus such as David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, who have observed the political fallout of the use of Predators and Reapers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Given the political incentives in play, it seems likely that the Obama administration will continue to expand the use of drones until factions within the U.S. show that they are willing to make the administration pay a political price at home. Some of this mobilization would have to come from the left, but this is also a scenario where self-styled Tea Party Republicans could put their money where their mouth is and go beyond mere murmurings of discontent over the course of U.S. foreign policy. Perhaps Michelle Bachmann can finally make herself useful?
]]>Now, Paul is not a foaming-at-the-mouth neocon. But neither do his views on the Middle East seem likely fulfill the hopes that the Leveretts have for the Tea Party — namely, providing “the most outspoken congressional opponents of potential moves by the Obama Administration toward military confrontation with Iran.”
For a more fleshed out account of the direction of the Tea Party’s foreign policy, check out Scott McConnell’s piece at Right Web. McConnell, a founding editor of the American Conservative, described the different approaches of neoconseravtives and Tea Partiers who tend toward fiscally-conservative restraint and writes:
Thus far, the neoconservatives appear to be parrying the challenge effectively. The question is, can the neocons, as they have with other political factions in the past, successfully co-opt this new political force in such a way as to make it amenable to their goals?
McConnell notes that Palin was discovered by neoconservative don Bill Kristol. Those Tea Partiers who have actually been successful (winning or garnering great followings and attention) have been courted by — and often seemed to please — Israel lobby forces and some neoconservative influences.
Take Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, who will represent Florida in the Senate as of early January. The day after winning his seat, Rubio announced a visit to Israel. During the campaign, Rubio, much to the excitement of neoconservatives, said that the U.S. should attack Iran to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons. Likewise, Utah’s Senator-elect Mike Lee, another Tea Partier, met with Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu and ran on a platform that “military action [against Iran] would be justified.” Both Senators-elect said the U.S. should allow Israel to strike Iran.
The picture with Rand Paul is significantly more complicated than what the Leveretts present. Comments Paul made during the campaign in May sparked a minor blog squabble between various elements of the “old right” — the American Conservative‘s Daniel Larison and Antiwar.com‘s Justin Raimondo. (Both could claim the “old right” mantle before the Tea Party was even a glimmer in the eye of Rick Santelli or the Koch brothers.)
Just a week after the mid-term elections that elevated Rubio, Lee and Paul to the Senate, McConnell gave an updated breakdown of Paul’s views in his Right Web piece:
On the other hand, Rand Paul, the son of the isolationist icon and early Tea Party favorite Ron Paul, has studiously avoided discussion of foreign policy issues in his campaign. In October, a GQ article reported that after Paul’s primary win he met with prominent neoconservatives Bill Kristol, Tom Donnelly of AEI, and Dan Senor (cofounder of the Foreign Policy Initiative) in Washington to talk foreign policy. While he once criticized the Republicans’ “military adventurism,” opposed the war in Iraq, and “scoffed at the threat of Iranian nukes,” he may have begun changing his positions. Senor categorized Paul as “in absorption mode” and not “cemented in his views.” Paul later met with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where he reportedly “told them what they wanted to hear” and distanced himself from his father, who has been critical of the extent of U.S. support for Israel.
McConnell concludes by noting that the Tea Party has a strong “religious” right element as well as a “libertarian” one.
The “religious” element is likely aligned with Christian Zionists such as John Hagee and his Christians United for Israel (CUFI), whose views on the Middle East profess a Greater Israel Zionism even more fervent and violent than one finds in most public neoconservative quarters (the two groups are already strong allies). As with the neocons, Christian Zionists tend to take a moralistic worldview that finds any and all enemies of Israel (particularly Muslims) to be “evil” — unredeemable to the point of requiring extermination by force (otherwise known as Armageddon, or the final battle between good and evil, a central piece of Christian Zionist eschatology.)
Furthermore, the “libertarian” elements of the Tea Party might indeed include those who, confronted by the wider consequences of an attack on Iran, would recoil at the idea of a broad and unpredictable Middle East war. But neoconservatives — in attempting to build a diverse coalition for their aggressive policies — will constantly downplay these negative wider consequences of an assault. (As they did during much of the panel on the “kinetic option” at the big Foundation for Defense of Democracies Iran confab earlier this month.)
And as for fiscally minded small-government ideologues from either branch of the Tea Party, they will come to learn that the cost of a bombing run will only be the price of a warehouse full of ordinance, smart bombs, drones with Hellfire missiles, and the fuel to get it all into Iranian territory. That just ain’t that much dough.
If the Leveretts so choose, they can take heart that there might indeed be some Tea Partiers who, as they put it, “are stalwart in their criticism of the Iraq war and their determination that the United States not launch another ‘war of choice’ in the Middle East that will end up doing even greater damage to America’s interests and international standing.” But I’m not going to hold out hope on this score.
Tea Partiers who make it into the halls of power will likely have their principles watered down by that power. The opinions of Tea Party activists in the field won’t concern neoconservatives, who are known for focusing their efforts on elites — what journalist Sidney Blumenthal called the “Counter Establishment” in his 1986 book. Irving Kristol once said that with a magazine that has “a circulation of a few hundred, you could change the world.” (Some recent populist outreach on YouTube and other mediums notwithstanding.)
The Tea Party — or even a significant portion of it — seems to me to be an unlikely part of any coalition in Washington that will work to stop the United States from starting a war with Iran.
]]>McConnell, in an article for Right Web, traces the Tea Party’s foreign policy pronouncements back to Sarah [...]]]>
McConnell, in an article for Right Web, traces the Tea Party’s foreign policy pronouncements back to Sarah Palin and her close relationship with neoconservative heavyweight Bill Kristol. Kristol, as described by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, “discovered” Palin the summer before John McCain put her on the Republican national ticket.
McConnell writes:
McCain enlisted influential neoconservative Randy Scheunemann as a policy advisor, and in turn Scheunemann brought on Steve Biegun as her chief foreign policy staffer. Palin’s previous foreign policy pronouncements had been vague and scattered, but she became an eager student. She made hawkish noises during the campaign: while she spoke more loosely than expected about the possibility of war with Russia, she forthrightly supported an Israeli strike on Iran. Despite efforts by paleoconservatives to reach out to her and provide some counterinfluence, she stayed on message—which would have considerable significance as she became a political star in her own right.
Palin has continued to hit neoconservative talking points even while the Tea Party movement has, at times, called for cuts in government spending and rejected the Bush administration’s military adventurism.
McConnell observes:
She reliably echoes neoconservative talking points about war with Iran. When addressing the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last February, she hit neocon talking points by citing Ronald Reagan, “peace through strength,” and “tough action” against Iran.
And
Wearing an Israeli flag pin, she charged that President Obama was causing “Israel, our critical ally” to question our support by reaching out to hostile regimes.
But Palin’s apparent willingness to uphold Bush’s “freedom agenda” of spreading democracy has not always been received with enthusiasm by Tea Party audiences who embrace small-government.
McConnell writes:
Even David Frum, the prominent neoconservative writer and Iraq war enthusiast who has expressed deep skepticism regarding Palin and the Tea Party, praised the foreign policy segments of her speech, claiming that she sounded as “somebody who knew something of what he or she was talking about.” Live blogging her talk, Frum tellingly observed that Tea Partiers sat on their hands during these segments: “Interesting—no applause for sanctions on Iran. No applause for Palin’s speculation that democracies keep the peace.”
While Tea Party members are, understandably, skeptical of the benefits of “nation building,” neoconservatives such as Frank Gaffney have capitalized on the movement’s nativist leanings by hyping the threat of “creeping Shariah.” Islamophobic fear mongering has proven itself a more effective tool for bringing, otherwise isolationist, Tea Partiers behind the neoconservative’s foreign policy.
And besides, a militarist foreign policy is far less expensive—dare I say “more fiscally responsible”?—if the nation building is cut from the budget.
McConnell writes:
]]>Asked at a recent Washington forum whether the new Congress would support or oppose an attack on Iran, Colin Dueck, author of Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War ll, quipped that if you do air strikes you don’t have to do nation building. In this sense, the budget constraints which Tea Party candidates worry about may be much less a barrier to near term neoconservative foreign policy ambitions than might be imagined.
Karon’s headline screams that the elections are likely to “clip Obama’s wings [...]]]>
Karon’s headline screams that the elections are likely to “clip Obama’s wings in the Middle East.” As for Iran, Karon strikes a more nuanced stance. Yes, the elections could result in pressure on Obama for escalating measures against Iran, but the prospect of war with the Islamic Republic (and airstrikes means a war) will remain dim as long as Obama is in the driver’s seat.
]]>Another [area of agreement between the Tea Party and the Republican establishment, who are both expected to send comrades to Washington] is the idea that the administration needs to get more confrontational on Iran.
Indeed, if Mr Obama were a truly cynical politician (and there are no signs yet that he is) he might recognise that he’d find it easier achieving bipartisan cooperation through military confrontation with Iran than by seeking rapprochement with a regime that most of Washington is never going to trust.
Still, mindful of the dangers of dragging an overburdened empire into yet another potentially catastrophic war, Mr Obama remains likely to resist pressure to attack Iran. But just as his already limited ability to respond to the deep crisis in the US economy will be further limited after tomorrow, so has there been a decline over the past decade in Washington’s ability to project influence to resolve complex problems in the Middle East. The harsh reality for Mr Obama is that the Middle East’s key power players are no more inclined to do his bidding these days than are the Republicans who look set to take charge of the House of Representatives.