This morning NPR’s David Welna reports, Pro-Israel Lobby Finds Longtime Supporters Defect On Syria , on AIPAC’s influence in Congress during this rare instance the lobby is fighting an uphill battle over the proposed U.S. attack on Syria. Here’s a clip:
AIPAC’s lobbyists swarmed Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell — the third biggest beneficiary in Congress of pro-Israel contributions — went to the Senate floor to announce that the resolution the Foreign Relations panel approved last week authorizing military action against Syria did not pass muster. “So I will be voting against this resolution. A vital national security risk is clearly not at play,” McConnell said, adding, “there are just too many unanswered questions about our long-term strategy in Syria.”McConnell is up for re-election next year in his home state of Kentucky. Longtime Kentucky political analyst Al Cross isn’t surprised by McConnell’s decision to break ranks on this issue with pro-Israel contributors. “He’s a party leader who wants to remain party leader, and his party is clearly, the majority of his party is against this,” says Cross, “and he faces an opponent in the primary who’s against it.”
Number two Senate Republican John Cornyn, who’s also seeking re-election next year, has also come out against the Syria resolution.
University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer, who co-authored a book on the pro-Israel lobby’s influence in Congress, says AIPAC has limited clout on Syria. “It almost always gets its way on issues like the Israel-Palestine conflict, on foreign aid to Israel, and on protecting Israel in the United Nations,” he says. “But when it comes to pushing the United States to use military force against another country because it’s seen as being in Israel’s interest, the lobby does not always get its way.”
…….. American University’s Thurber says there’s a good reason why that resolution was pulled yesterday from the Senate floor. “It looks like they’re not going to get the votes,” says Thurber, “and so it is something, at least on this issue, that’s rare, that you have all those people together, and rare that it looks like they may lose.”
And that would also be a rare outcome for AIPAC’s lobbyists.
Is it a sunrise for the nightflower?
Another macro-political dot connected (the mere mention). The interview connected some of the political micro-dots (politicians involved; npi) as well, without dwelling on them.
Brief but to the point.
Morning Edition claims 26M listeners, weekly. Who knows what that translates into daily, or for this specific piece, but it may be a sizable, drive-time audience. Certainly millions. Of liberals/base/upper-middle class, donating (money and time) “people-that-matter.”
http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/audience.html
Thanks Annie. Hopeful.
I sure would like to be a fly on the wall of the editorial meetings on this piece. It’d be great to know what holds them back and/or if they will follow up on this. Still, even if it’s a one-off, it has traction given current events.
It’s the 20th anniversary of the Oslo accords. Israel won but can it keep deceiving the world indefininitely ? The lobby keeps the settler construction machine moving. And the lobby has.now been exposed.
For some reason, NPR’s coverage on the Middle East is more aligned with Fox News than with the New York Times. (Could it be because their Middle Eastern editor is a committed Zionist who schmoozes with Lieberman when he’s in NYC?)
This political story is a rare exception – and only published after politico, NYT and many other outlets did.
Just shows when even NPR has to be dragged doing the story, dragged by all other media outlets, it’s seriously becomming mainstream.
Hopefully this will become a routine whenever AIPAC is pushing something which is bad for America but good for Israel(read: most of the times).
The reporting before a war with Iran will need these stories, too.
The money shot from that NPR link
” And Capitol Hill was blanketed this week by some 300 lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.”
I wonder how many AIPAC sent to get the war in Iraq on .
I wonder what impact, if any, will this have on how US citizens see AIPAC?