“This use of anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool is a sickening new development in American political discourse, and we have heard too much of it lately—some coming, ominously, from our own White House and its representatives. Let’s not mince words: Murmuring about “money” and “lobbying” and “foreign interests” who seek to drag America into war is a direct attempt to play the dual-loyalty card. It’s the kind of dark, nasty stuff we might expect to hear at a white power rally, not from the President of the United States—and it’s gotten so blatant that even many of us who are generally sympathetic to the administration, and even this deal, have been shaken by it.”
The White House and its allies shouldn’t need to smear American Jews–and a sitting senator–as dual loyalists to make their case.
Chuck Schumer is a politician—a skilled and successful one. Which means that today’s announcement, following months of wildly uncharacteristic silence, that the senior Senator from New York is opposing the Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran is first and foremost a reflection of his calculations as to where his own self-interest lies. It does not take an electoral genius to imagine why a Senator from New York State might oppose a deal that keeps many Jewish voters—and an even higher percentage of non-Jewish voters—up at night. Keeping your base happy is generally the first rule of political survival.