Shockingly, the story mentions Israel only three times, and not till the 24th paragraph (of about 30). It does not include Adelson’s October 2013 recommendation to Obama, that he nuke Iran. It does not even mention Iran, which was one of Adelson’s big issues in the last presidential race.
Here’s the Post’s setup:
former Florida governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio Gov. John Kasich… will descend this week on Adelson’s luxury hotel in Las Vegas, the Venetian, for an important step in what some are calling the “Sheldon Primary.”
Officially, the potential 2016 candidates will be at the Venetian for the spring meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, which begins Thursday with a golf outing, followed by a VIP dinner featuring Bush and hosted by the Adelsons in the private airplane hangar where Adelson keeps his fleet.
Now here are the first two references to Israel, way down in the story, as an afterthought:
Most of the prospective candidates have made a point of reaching out to Adelson with phone calls and personal visits when they come through town. The conversations are not overt pitches for financial backing yet, but rather solicitations of Adelson’s thoughts on the economy and Israel as well as strategy for the 2014 midterm elections, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Adelson, who is worth an estimated $37.9 billion, according to Bloomberg, is a staunch supporter of Israel. He has expressed little interest in some of the social issues that motivate the GOP base. But he is driven by what he has said he sees as Obama’s socialist agenda. He is a fierce opponent of organized labor and is currently embroiled in a fight to ban online gambling.
I’m gobsmacked in Gotham. Adelson has one overriding issue, Israel, and preventing the creation of a Palestinian state and the division of Jerusalem. In his uncensored remarks last fall, he didn’t talk about organized labor, no, he came off as a lunatic. He talked about Muslims wanting “to kill 100 percent of the Jews,” about the Palestinian state as a precursor to another Holocaust, about there not being any such thing as Palestinians.
“There’s no such thing as a Palestinian people. They have fooled the world very successfully.”
Here was his advice to Obama about Iran:
What are we going to negotiate about? I would say ‘Listen, you see that desert out there, I want to show you something.’ …You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’ And so there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever. Then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development. You want to be peaceful? Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee you that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.’
The Post deprives us of any such intelligence. No wonder the American people are so ignorant. No wonder that the grassroots are on fire. This is a hugely unstable situation, discursively.
Thanks to Scott McConnell.
The two candidates who got far and away the highest poll results in the CPAC straw poll, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, are not going to see him and kiss the ring.
This tells me that the GOP base has gotten much better political instincts than a decade ago. Bush did a lot more damage to the conservative movement than originally thought. Because it seems that damage was great not just to non-conservatives like me, but apparently also to the GOP base’s perception of what the movement had become and what it stood for.
I would never vote for either Paul or Cruz, but I still respect them both a lot more for daring to challenge the toxic GOP establishment, than I respect craven cronies like Jeb Bush or Scott Walker. Rubio is basically the Hispanic version of Mark Kirk.
And I’m pleased to see the GOP base hasn’t given up on the questioning spirit since 2010.
Now all I hope is that the liberal base follows suit and throws Hillary Clinton on the trash heap of history and selects a genuine liberal, a Warren-style candidate. (Unlikely to happen, our side has a lot to learn in political warfare, especially rooting out the neoliberals/neocon lite candidates like Clinton).
It is a very important point we should be beating on. The Clintons are actually neocons for all practical purposes. .
Chris Hayes had a segment about the same story last night: http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/you-need-to-know-about-the-sheldon-primary-206583875590
Interesting article on monies collected by Jewish orgs. citing Israel as biggest recipient.
http://forward.com/articles/194978/-billion-bucks-the-jewish-charity-industry-unco/?p=all
Long time (recovering) readers of WaPo like myself had long known that since the demise of Ben Bradley and Katherine Graham , the paper wasn’t worth lining a bird cage. It was only because it cost 25 cents for years that I actually bought it. One always had a sense that the editorial writers were oblivious to the rest of the news contained in the paper. Happily, the paper has lost most of its readership, and has closed many printing plants. Thanks be to Allah for the internet and sites like Mondoweiss.