This is delicious. Donald Trump’s anti-interventionist foreign policy ideas are causing panic among the neoconservatives. Clearly this branch of the Republican establishment will leave the party over Trump.
Neoconservative Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin is outraged that Chris Christie would endorse Donald Trump despite “months and months of careful coaching” in foreign policy by “outside… experts.” That’s how the Israel lobby works, by coaching politicians. This is what the neocons have successfully done with Marco Rubio: gotten him to be a robot on the Israel issue.
Notice the Christie gaffe Rubin cites, that those experts helped him overcome:
In fact, after months and months of careful coaching by outside foreign policy experts, his initial gaffes (e.g. “occupied territories” was how he referred to the West Bank) stopped and he became proficient on national security. One former adviser told me he “absolutely” would never have helped Christie had he known he would endorse Trump. He said of Christie’s endorsement, “It’s an absolute disgrace.” It is exactly that, because Christie knows better.
It is deeply sad he would then sweep away months of high-minded speeches to enable a man he knows to be unfit for the presidency to attain that office at a time of such urgency.
And then this. Neoconservative Robert Kagan, also in the Washington Post, is endorsing Hillary Clinton because of Trump’s xenophobia and demagoguery and racism, but also the foreign policy:
Have his foreign policies, in particular, contributed to the fraying of the liberal world order that the United States created after World War II? Yes, and for these failures he has deserved criticism and principled opposition. But Republican and conservative criticism has taken an unusually dark and paranoid form. Instead of recommending plausible alternative strategies for the crisis in the Middle East, many Republicans have fallen back on a mindless Islamophobia, with suspicious intimations about the president’s personal allegiances.
Kagan is the man who brought us the Project for New American Century letters that helped get the country into the Iraq War.
So Hillary Clinton is the shop for muscular internationalists. Bernie Sanders keeps beating up on her friendship with Henry Kissinger, and that’s a good thing. But why doesn’t he talk about her affection for Benjamin Netanyahu and Dennis Ross? Netanyahu has terrible favorability ratings, especially among black Democrats, many of whom boycotted his speech to Congress a year ago. But Hillary Clinton wants to have him into the White House in her first month in office.
Remember that some neocons also left the Reagan Bush team when Bush got tough on Israel, and crossed the aisle to Bill Clinton. The Israel lobby transcends party.
Thanks to Scott McConnell, Peter Voskamp, and Glenn Greenwald:
I'll probably be pointing out every day yet another neocon declaring support for Clinton over Trump https://t.co/6MDTjg0Ywj
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 25, 2016
Rather than bashing Netanyahu, Sanders could show some respect for Jimmy Carter — a former president who has been shunned by much of the Democratic establishment and vilified by the Israel Lobby, but still loved and respected by many mainstream Christians for his charitable work (especially with Habitat for Humanity) as well as his efforts in peacemaking and diplomacy through the Carter Center and the Elders.
I’m not always that keen on MJones slant, but there’s this article there today that pretty much confirms Glenn Greenwald’s tweet. The article should have appended for Hillary on the end of the title because that’s pretty much the conclusion it comes to.
Will Conservatives Abandon Donald Trump in the General Election?
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum
Because of Trump’s almost inevitable win on the Republican side; Neocon Republicans and Sheldon Adelson are starting to look to Hillary as their standard-bearer! There are more and more signs of this. Can you believe that Hillary’s foreign policy is so attractive to Republicans that they would forego their own candidate???
Why is Bernie’s Team not investigating this trending development and not firing on all cylinders to expose her as the candidate of the right; the candidate of Neocons and billionaires???
Why isn’t he exposing how the right is on the verge of giving her a cake walk to the White House???
Bernie Sanders has so much fodder to use against her! Instead he’s sounding like a broken record.
Why isn’t he shaming her for pandering to Netanyahu, an extremist, rabid Zionist, who undermined a Democratic Presidency?
Why isn’t he attacking her on Libya and Syria?
If he doesn’t do something drastic; he’s going to tank on Super Tuesday!
Where’s the pressure on the Goldman Sachs transcripts? Where are the attacks on her unrepentant lack of transparency?
Where is the poster size chart that exposes her billionaire and millionaire funders and her Ziocon friends?
Where’s his criticism of Bill and Hillary’s entitled elitism?
Where’s the attack on Bill’s welfare reform act?
All those years as an independent on the sidelines and now he has the only opportunity he’ll ever get in a lifetime to hand the Democratic establishment and the Clinton Machine their asses and what the efff is he doing to take full advantage of it?
Why isn’t he running away with this contest when Hillary has so much baggage to haul? He should be leaving her in the duuuust with all the baggage she’s hauling!
http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/eae79302b99496f2468742994f9774b1be2b0084/c=16-0-625-457&r=x404&c=534×401/local/-/media/Indianapolis/2015/03/05/B9316488024Z.1_20150305115212_000_G8UA4QPH5.1-0.jpg
So Hillary just gave Sanders a beating in S.C. and instead of handing her her ass, Bernie’s giving her an effortless nomination. Easiest prediction ever: Sanders is toast after New Hampshire.
I don’t want to say who’s gonna win the general; but if we rely on Astrologists; and I find them unreliable — Hillary’s gonna beat Trump.
Here’s the thing though: Bush ended up being the most hated President going out; and if Hillary wins, banish the thought, she’ll be the most resented President going in. So it’s going to be a battle royale for the Presidency and a razor thin margin.
You can’t go back and recapture Bill’s magic with — Hillary!
So she’s got a new line now: she’s going to make the country whole again– what tripe! She’s the most polarizing figure in politics, perhaps ever, and even on the left! And I suppose she’s going to reverse gravity too! How can people be so absolutely, dense?
Neocon war hawks like Kagan supporting a neocon war hawk …Hillary Clinton. Why oh why did Bernie steer clear of her war record in Libya, Syria.
Philip Weiss
I don’t think the neocons are panicked about Trump’s “anti-interventionist foreign policy ideas.”
I think the neocons are panicked that Trump may intervene against Israel’s best friends – the Saudis & their Al Qaeda proxies, thereby seriously weakening Israel.
Have a look at this:
I think things like these may explain a great deal of why neocons are panicking over Trump, and I have some imagination why that may be so.
https://youtu.be/TzSjPDaSNMQ