The Nation: ‘a thunderous, coordinated assault is underway’ against Chas Freeman

By Robert Dreyfuss. Good reporting. 
My big new theme, I'm working on this one. In 1857-60, Abraham Lincoln, then an outsider radical and disappointed office-seeker who believed one thing– that slavery was evil– built the Republican Party and broke the Democratic Party with the aid of a brilliant political thrust: he said there was a "conspiracy" to spread slavery across the United States and this conspiracy included a lot of northern Democrats, working in "concert" with the slave power, and who were not up front about their motives.
Lincoln is today considered our greatest president, and one of our greatest intellectuals/lawyers, to boot.
Lincoln's gift to us is his religious/moral thinking, and his political labors. We may use different language, but we must also do our political work, which includes identifying the powerful political actors who are not being upfront about their true agenda and who are acting in concert. This action has been going on for a long time on this issue–anti-Zionist Jews complained 60 years ago about getting out-foxed in Washington by the Jewish-nationalists, at the same time as the Arabists (Freeman's tradition) were also dealt out– and you can call it neoconservatism or Israel-firstism, or a transparent cabal, or the Israel lobby; but until Chris Matthews can discuss it openly, let alone our presidential contenders, our politics are corrupted by it.