The Great Political Reversal on Israel : William McGurn
http://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-mcgurn-the-great-political-reversal-on-israel-1427759098
The Buchananites have vanished from the GOP, while the left turns against the Jewish state.
Will history mark the Obama years as the moment American Jewry split with the Democratic Party?
The question has a special resonance in a month in which Barack Obama warns the Israelis they may no longer presume U.S. backing at the United Nations—and dispatches his chief of staff to deliver a speech denouncing the “50-year occupation” of Palestinian lands.
Still, it’s not the only question. A parallel development on Israel in the Republican Party has gone almost completely unnoticed: the complete disappearance of the Buchanan wing.
Not all that long ago, Pat Buchanan was a fixture in the Republican firmament. There were his two stints at the White House, first as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon, then as communications director for the Gipper. There was also a popular column and starring roles on three television shows—“The McLaughlin Group,” “Crossfire” and “Capitol Gang.”
In the early 1990s, Mr. Buchanan marshaled this influence to launch a war for the heart of the Republican Party. There were a number of causes (including George H.W. Bush’s broken no-tax-raise pledge) but the precipitating factor here was the run-up to what we now call the First Gulf War with Saddam Hussein.
The operative statement came on “The McLaughlin Group” on Aug. 26, 1990: “There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East,” Mr. Buchanan said, “the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.”
Later in the program, he underscored the point: “The Israelis want this war desperately because they want the United States to destroy the Iraqi war machine. They want us to finish them off. They don’t care about our relations with the Arab world.”
These words would launch accusations of anti-Semitism, and a critical, 40,000 word article in National Review by William F. Buckley Jr. It did not slow Mr. Buchanan down. About the same time the Buckley essay appeared, Mr. Buchanan announced he was challenging President Bush for the Republican nomination for president.
One irony is that, at the time, Mr. Bush was not thought much of a friend of Israel either. His administration had threatened to rescind $10 billion in loan guarantees for housing for Soviet Jews if Israel continued building settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. From the Democratic side, candidate Bill Clinton accused President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker of having “chosen to browbeat Israel.”
After a strong showing in New Hampshire, Mr. Buchanan’s votes dropped. In 1996 he ran again, carrying four states to Bob Dole’s 44. In 2000, he tried once more—this time as the candidate of a Reform Party rent by even more divisions than the GOP.
So where are we today? Mr. Buchanan is still decrying what he calls the War Party, but his message finds little resonance among Republican voters. Even the Arabs are rejecting Buchananism, newly united and these days closer to Israel’s foreign policy than Mr. Buchanan’s (or President Obama’s).
Some argue that the tea partiers are the true heirs of Pitchfork Pat. In the sense that they also oppose an overweening federal government, perhaps. On Israel, not at all.
Polls suggest tea partiers are more supportive of Israel than even other Republicans. One Pew survey found “86% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who agree with the Tea Party view Israel favorably, compared with 68% of Republicans and GOP leaners who do not agree with the Tea Party.”
There are many reasons for this: the rise of the GOP’s evangelical wing, the dying off of the Republican Arabists in the State Department, Mr. Buchanan’s discrediting fling with the Reform Party, and so on.
The biggest, however, might simply be 9/11. Since then, many Americans have looked around the Middle East and concluded that the Israelis are up against the same enemies we are. Whatever the causes, not a single Republican likely to run for the 2016 nomination will be taking the Buchanan line on Israel.
Take Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s making a Buchanan-like bid for the nomination on the grounds of conservative purity. Not only did he announce for president at evangelical Liberty University, he called for replacing Mr. Obama with “a president who stands unapologetically with the nation of Israel.”
Or even Rand Paul. As the most libertarian-inclined of the bunch, Mr. Paul is surely the most skeptical of entangling America in Middle Eastern wars. Yet even Mr. Paul is now at pains to demonstrate his pro-Israel bona fides, traveling to Israel and sponsoring a bill called the “Stand with Israel Act” targeting aid to the Palestinian Authority.
A quarter century after we heard about the “amen corner,” inside the GOP Mr. Buchanan’s faction has been routed. Pity American Jews can’t bring themselves to support the party that supports Israel.
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