Republican Jewish Coalition endorses Obama’s Syria call

We hear a lot of rhetoric about putting country above politics, but the Republican Jewish Coalition comes through this week with a robust endorsement of President Obama’s call for congressional backing for a Syria strike.

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) issued an Action Alert today to our 45,000 members, calling on them to reach out to their elected officials in the House and Senate, to ask them to support the upcoming resolution authorizing the use of military force against the Bashar Al-Assad regime in Syria.

The Action Alert stressed the moral threshold that has been crossed by Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its own people.

We also emphasized that it is in America’s vital national interests that we continue to be able to project – in Syria and elsewhere – a credible military deterrent.

The RJC believes that this not a Republican or Democrat issue. We encouraged our members to reach out in a bipartisan fashion to Republican and Democrat officials to ask for their support of the resolution.

Okay, so the statement does not mention Obama (the action alert does), and the use of “Democrat” as an adjective remains as absurd as ever.

And let me caveat, naturally, that I can’t enter into whether a strike is the right or wrong way to address the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime.

But what is salient here is that the RJC makes a case that goes against its partisan mission in two ways: It endorses a Democratic president’s legislation (I remember generic praise from Jewish Democrats for past GOP presidents, but I don’t remember a specific endorsement of a legislative initiative.) More significantly, the RJC is wading forcefully into an emerging internecine struggle within its own party. Opposition to a Syria intervention is not confined to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). A number of establishment mainstreamers (including Liz Cheney) are opposed as well.