Political Points–Will Lieberman leap? and talking tachles with Dennis Ross

**Alan Steinberg, blogging at NJPoliticker, wonders (hopefully — he backs Republicans) whether Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will switch to caucusing with Republicans in case Nov. 2 results in a 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate.

If the Republicans win all nine of the races mentioned above, each party will have 50 U.S. Senate seats.  Vice President Joe Biden would be the tie breaker, and the Democrats would thus retain control of the United States Senate.  That is, unless Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) switches parties and joins the Republicans, giving the GOP a 51-49 edge.

I have no doubt that if the November elections result in a 50-50 Senate, the Republicans will make every effort to persuade Senator Lieberman to join the GOP.  Is there a realistic possibility of his making such a switch?  I truly think so.

On domestic issues, Lieberman endorses, for the most part, the initiatives of the Obama administration and the Senate Democrats.  On foreign policy and defense issues, however, Lieberman is solidly in support of Republican positions, particularly on Israel and the Middle East.  

That would clear Lieberman to run as a Republican in 2012, Steinberg says.

**Ed Koch, the former New York Mayor, and Dan Senor, the Fox commentator who earlier this year considered a GOP run for the New York Senate, endorse George Phillips, the GOP candidate attempting to unseat Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), who has one of the poorest pro-Israel records in Congress (I should have added this earlier: according to mainstream pro-Israel insiders.)

Koch is a Democrat, of course, but that hasn’t stopped him from endorsing Republicans in the past. He endorsed George W. Bush in 2004, for instance.

The Hinchey Middle East record as outlined here by the Phillips campaign, is accurate as far as I can tell. In terms of Hinchey’s votes. This, however, is a bit of a doozy:

-In 2006, Hinchey voted against a bill to promote democratic institution-building in the Palestinian territories titled the “Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act.” It passed 361-37.

PATA did no such thing; instead, it leveraged Palestinian concessions to U.S. policies by withholding support for Palestinian institutions. The guts of it was that the remotest association with Hamas killed U.S. funding. At the time of its passage — just after the Palestinian elections brought Hamas into a power-sharing agreement with P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas — that meant no funding for the P.A., period. (That changed, naturally, after the mini-civil war in 2007 irrevocably split Abbas from Hamas, and set the stage for the substantive funding the P.A. now receives.)

The House version, as passed, would have made it virtually impossible for Congress to approve any funding for the Palestinians, even through NGOs. The Senate version, and the conference bill that passed both houses, limited the strictures to funding for the Palestinian Authority. (I’m not sure which vote the Phillips campaign is referring to — the original House bill or the conference bill.)

But what makes this description Orwellian is that the very first programs to be dropped after PATA passed — the programs immediately targeted in 2006 — promoted democratic institutions. The United States was paying for two consultancies in the Gaza Strip, one to promote independent election oversight and one to help set up an independent judiciary.

Funding for those consultancies ended immediately. I don’t believe this was the intent of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who initiated the House version of PATA, but it shows the divide between what well-meaning lawmakers perceive, and the reality. Ros-Lehtinen imagined a plethora of Hamas-affiliated activity getting taxpayers’ greenbacks; in fact, existing laws banning such funding meant these were practically nil. (The two consultancies had been established before the elections brought Hamas to governance a few months earlier.)

And not that it would have mattered much — I can’t imagine Hamas authorities welcomed the initiatives in any case, or even would have allowed them to continue.

But still.

Hinchey, incidentally, is a J Street endorsee. Considering the hard time the group gave Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) for addressing a group ready to countenance one-stateism, and considering J Street’s ultimate endorsement of this summer’s Iran sanctions bill, this kind of sticks out:

-Most stunningly of all, Hinchey voted against one of the Obama administration’s most important foreign policy initiatives, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions Act, passed by overwhelming margins in both houses of Congress and signed into law this summer. This key piece of legislation, vital to both American and Israeli security, sailed through the House 412-12.

**Carl Paladino, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in New York, got into trouble when he joined in Rabbi Yehuda Levin‘s gay bashing. Then he got in more trouble when he pulled away.

And now, Rosanna Scotto of Fox’s Good Day New York asks, per the New York Jewish Week: was Paladino "making any backdoor deals with the Orthodox to stay alive.”

Staying alive. Whether you’re a mother or whether you’re a brother …

I’ll stop now.

**Dennis Ross, who runs Iran policy for the White House, reassures AIPAC on Iran policy, at a national summit in Hollywood, Fla. I’m linking to Laura Rozen at Politico, who has saved me the trouble of reformatting the garbled email I got from the White House.

But Laura also gets it right: The bulk of the talk, on Iran, is not new: We reached out, they rebuffed, now they’re paying the price, and it bites because by reaching out, the United States managed to get a lot of other nations on board for sanctions.

As Laura notes, however, the kicker is interesting: Ross closes by straying from Iran to reassure his listeners about President Obama’s strong support for Israel during the peace talks.

Not only is this clearly an election message, but look at this:

First, while we will continue to do whatever we can to support Israel’s security needs and to fight efforts to delegitimize Israel, the only true way for Israel to gain the long-term security it deserves is through a genuine peace with its neighbors. 

(Snip)

Now, no one is more familiar with the challenges of reaching an agreement than I am. And there are serious and difficult issues that must be resolved both in the near-term and in the long-run to achieve an agreement and ensure that it lasts. I am certainly under no illusions about how hard that will be. But no one should underestimate the strategic importance of peace for Israelis, for Palestinians, and for the United States. 

I hope that as you continue to advocate on behalf of the United States and Israel, you will continue to advocate for peace, security, and the decisions that will be necessary to realize these objectives. 

Now, I’ve teased Dennis here for his tendency to the verbose (I should talk), but no one is better at sheathing an iron fist in a velvet glove. The Obama administration wants Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend a settlement freeze to faciliatte a return to direct talks. Netanyahu wants reassurances about recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Ross’ message seems clear: You’ve got it. No delegitimization. We’re there. But this peace thing — it’s not secondary. Not to you — and not to us.

**Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, thinks minority whip Rep. Eric Cantor‘s idea of pulling Israel funding out of foreign funding, is not a good one:

Minority Whip Cantor’s proposal is as transparent as it is reckless.  Manipulating aid to Israel in this way would dangerously threaten continued bipartisan agreement on national security policy and programs other than direct assistance to Israel that aid in its security. 

The foreign aid bill funds U.S. diplomatic efforts at the State Department, including diplomacy related to peace in the Middle East.  It aids other countries in the region to help defeat al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations and includes non-proliferation initiatives. In addition, the bill addresses moral imperatives that are also destabilizing factors, like hunger, poverty, and disease, which too often create a fertile environment for terror recruitment.  Because it is inextricably linked with broader U.S. national security goals, separating assistance for Israel in order to make it easier for Republican members to vote against the foreign aid bill would be counterproductive.

Too much is at stake to give Republicans in Congress a license to vote against the foreign aid budget, and it is clear that Eric Cantor’s outrageous proposal is based purely on political motives, not what is best for U.S. or global security.

Much has always been made, in the pro-Israel community and among pols, of the need for bipartisan support for Israel, and the necessity of not making Israel an election issue. In recent years, Republicans violated this principle more often than Dems — but, it must be said, mostly in presidential elections. Republicans targeted John Kerry in 2004 and then Barack Obama in 2008 as soft on Israel, but left all but the most obvious congressional targets alone.

In this cycle, however, the GOP has stepped into congressional waters, with ads by the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Emergency Committee for Israel targeting Dems who otherwise have pro-Israel backing. The issue is cropping up in debates, particularly in the race in suburban Chicago between Joel Pollak and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

Cantor has been a notable exception: In his speech to AIPAC’s policy conference, he made it clear that on the Hill, support for Israel crosses party lines, and reserved his criticism for the executive branch. (I’ll try to find the link later. UPDATE: Here it is.)

This issue — of how to finance assistance — might finally blow the "we all support Israel" consensus out of the water, once and for all. But I don’t think (as Lowey does) that this is a matter of election season politics.

Two vastly different philosophies are emerging over what constitutes support for Israel: Is it sui generis, a genuine ally in a world that one otherwise should approach with extreme caution, which appears to be the emerging conservative view? Or is support for Israel inextricably part of the American engagement with others — and does teasing Israel apart from the rest of the planet do the Jewish state a disservice, which is Lowey’s point?

In any case, does the consensus even make sense? Dems have griped to me for years about RJC attacks — but the parties have genuine differences over what is good for the United States and for Israel when it comes to Middle East policy. This is especially pronounced in the executive branch, which sets foreign policy — and now it is emerging in the Hill, which famously holds the purse strings.

**Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, laments the end of the consensus to Ha’aretz’s Natasha Mozgovaya. Natasha seems bemused that the rift has emerged in, of all places, Delaware, in the U.S. Senate race between Christine O’Donnell (R) and Chris Coons (D). Hey — what would one otherwise expect of a state with resorts named for Rehovot and Beit Hanina?

**In Brooklyn, messianic Christians pull their center out of consideration as a polling booth in order to make it easier for neighborhood Orthodox to vote, from the Daily News.

**From Politico, the campaign of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) apologizes for citing as endorsements praise from Democrats, including the party’s nominee for governor, Ethan Berkowitz. The praise came after Murkowski lost the GOP primary to Joe Miller, and before she launched her write-in campaign — i.e., when she looked like toast.

**Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) for the Senate in 2012? From Tablet.

Keep the tips coming, rkampeas@jta.org