How Obama Out-Muscled Aipac
Nothing sweeter than aIpac tears . . .
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/how-obama-out-muscled-aipac
Senator Richard Durbin is on a long list of Democrats who have dismayed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The same Richard Durbin who owes his political career to Aipac. In 1982, Aipac members supported Durbin, then an obscure college professor, against Paul Findley’s campaign for reelection to the House as retribution for Findley’s outspoken advocacy on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 2015, Durbin not only supported the president’s Iran agreement against Aipac’s wishes, he also helped organize his fellow Democrats to defend it. “He has been a great disappointment to the pro-Israel community,” says Morris Amitay, a former executive director of Aipac.
Other disappointments include Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House minority whip, who led this year’s Aipac-funded trip of House Democratic freshmen to Israel; and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who was an early sponsor of Iran sanctions legislation when he got to Congress. Earlier in the summer, Aipac’s leaders believed it was possible to win the support of red state Democratic senators such as Montana’s Jon Tester, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp. (Republicans didn’t need to be persuaded to vote against Obama.) In the end, all of those Democrats supported the Iran agreement, and even helped block a vote on a resolution in the Senate to formally disapprove it.
These kinds of defeats aren’t supposed to happen to Aipac. Over the past 30 years, the organization has grown into the most powerful foreign policy lobby in Washington. Its fundraising prowess is fearsome. In a 2013 filing with the IRS, Aipac and a sister organization—the group that funds trips to Israel for members of Congress—recorded more than $70 million in contributions. Aipac also raised $30 million for a group that ran anti-deal television, radio, and Internet ads throughout the country this summer. Its initiatives, particularly on Iran sanctions, passed Congress with bipartisan, near unanimity in 2010 and 2012, over initial White House objections. It’s had success in securing military aid for Israel. On this, Obama has done more than his predecessors, financing the development of Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system on top of the annual $3 billion U.S. subsidy to the country.
Obama, however, is also one of the reasons Aipac couldn’t stop the Iran deal: Democrats feared the president more than they feared the pro-Israel lobby. “Aipac went to the Democrats and said, ‘We need your help as a friend.’ Obama said, ‘If you cross me you are going to make an enemy of my machine forever,’?” says South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. “It’s one thing to lose an old friend, it’s sad. But you think twice before you make a new enemy.”
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The pro-deal lobbyists were more vocal and much more explicit in turning this into a loyalty-to-Obama issue. While the White House didn’t make threats directly, a litany of groups did. Senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, two Democrats who oppose the deal, were featured on a truck-mounted billboard in New York City sponsored by MoveOn.org calling them “Most Likely to Start a War.” A pro-deal group known as Credo-Action derided Schumer as “warmonger Chuck” and called for blocking his path to becoming the party’s leader in the Senate upon the retirement of Harry Reid. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the White House in 2014 teamed up with the Ploughshares Fund—an antiwar foundation that spent more than $7 million in the last four years fighting anti-deal groups—to make the case for an Iran agreement.
Crooked Bob Menendez has a big sad in numerous places inside the article. Screw him.
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