Here in Oregon Wyden is referred to as New York’s third Senator. His base in Portland is more radical than he is, and the state and local Democratic machine is at best lukewarm about him, despite the national attention he has gathered on civil liberties. Congressman Blumenhauer from Portland is in the seat Wyden used to have, is a Sanders progressive, against this bill, supportive of the Iran deal while Wyden was really on the fence, and could be a challenger, particularly since he’s seen as representing Portland, not New York.
A ray of light is, with Trump, you never know……
Truly great reporting, Phil. Phil for Pulitzer Prize.
Wikipedia: After being elected to the Senate from Kentucky in 2010, Rand Paul already filed for re-election in 2016, back in 2011. By Kentucky state law, he cannot run for re-election to the US Senate in 2016, if he is the Presidential or Vice-Presidential nominee for either major party. He likes being in the Senate and the modest fame he has, and may have decided that it’s more important to secure his seat there than please his father’s movement of libertarians and peaceniks, who don’t have much influence in Bible-belt Kentucky. Christian Zionists are strong in Kentucky, and Rand Paul’s wife is a committed fundamentalist christian Zionist. She brought him into her church, dispensational Baptists I believe.
He cannot afford to alienate her and the christian Zionists, the Republican base in Kentucky. They’re probably as strong there as in South Carolina.
He knows that Adelson and the neocons would never countenance his being even the Vice-Presidential nominee, so most everything he says and does can be interpreted as contributing to his re-election to the Senate from Kentucky for 2016.
Strange that he gets elected in the first place by association with his uncompromising father, and re-elected by repudiating his father’s stand in favor of the Iran agreement.
A pol’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.
Watch what Huckabee says and does concerning this issue. He is the most prominent christian zionist in the present Republican pack, and has marked influence over a solid plurality of Republican primary voters. If he doesn’t pick up the fight in the next week or so, it will be because he judges it a losing cause he doesn’t want to be seen leading.
The good news is that it is within our power to regulate this lizard brain. For example
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3303604/?report=reader
Tzipora is really quite nice. Well done.
Maybe there won’t be any practical change in Israel as a result of a Netanyahu defeat.
But there will be a salutary result in America. The national Republican party is going to be permanently characterized as owned by such as Adelson and fatefully beholden to
Southern Christian fundies (“evangelicals” to them) and to their more rabid heretic cousins, the christian Zionists.
It’s going to become a regional party, with dominance in the old Confederacy, Oklahoma, and parts of the Mountain West. The Republican Party has ensured that they will be unable to defeat any Democrat for President in 2016.
Sheldon Adelson is going to lose a lot of money, even for him, and the authorities are already going after him in his Vegas and Macau casinos.
This constant saber-rattling for pre-emptive aggressive war on Iran is going to come to an end.
Just think of him as the same phenotype as that tall feller over there in EyeRack with the big knife and the Boris Karloff demeanor. Bill Kristol must have been swept off his feet.
Bret Stephens has long functioned as a spokesman for higher-up neocons. He has been the editor of the Jerusalem Post (Murdoch owned) and for a while now, a leading columnist at the Wall Street Journal (Murdoch owned). He makes a lot of appearances on Fox. He is a pawn in a game that Murdoch is playing, and this is a rather new mission he has now, maybe the theme of “clash of civilizations” which has always been a favorite of the more intellectual neocons. The targets of the new campaign might be wealthy donors of the Wall Street/business world of either party, and aspiring young politicians of the Republican Party. The same ones who flocked to Adelson’s cattle call in Vegas last year.
I just called CSPAN in DC and the whole speech will be televised on the main network, CSPAN. Time not certain, but it will be there. Given the interest, probably CNN and Fox will televise the speech. Let’s hope that other CSPAN and/or network cameras are at associated events around D.C. such as Phil Giraldi’s forum, and the demonstrations which will be taking place.