Posted on 12/22/2006 6:32:23 PM PST by Nasty McPhilthy
WASHINGTON - That is the question many prominent Democrats are asking themselves following the publication of the former president’s new book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” In it, Carter blames Israel for impeding peace and pro-Israel advocates in this country for unduly influencing American foreign policy.
Rightly afraid that they will lose Jewish voters — a strong base of support since the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt — Democratic leaders have criticized Carter’s assertions. But dealing with Carter will require more than news releases.
In an advertisement published in the country’s leading newspapers, the Anti-Defamation League printed statements from incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Speaker of the House-elect Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.
Conyers called the book “offensive and wrong,” Pelosi said that, “it is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression” and Dean said that “on this issue President Carter speaks for himself, the opinions in his book are his own, they are not the views or position of the Democratic Party.” Yet Dean also couched his criticism by making it clear that “I have tremendous respect for former President Carter.”
This equivocation — that Dean could still have “tremendous respect” for a former president who has used his position, repeatedly, to smear the Jewish state — is what will prove troublesome for Democrats in the months and years to come. Will the Democrats give Carter a prime speaking opportunity at their upcoming presidential convention, as is traditional for former presidents? Recall the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston, when Carter spent the evening, very publicly, sitting next to Michael Moore.
He may be 82 years old, but Carter is not the sort of man who will go away quietly. Ever since leaving office, he has shown a disregard for protocol in carrying out his own independent foreign policy, often at odds with the actual, elected leader of the country.
In 1994, he defied fellow Democratic President Bill Clinton when he visited then-North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung. The president of South Korea deemed the meeting “ill-timed” and said that it gave cover to the North Koreans and encouraged them to continue their “stalling tactics” on nuclear proliferation. One Clinton administration official said that Carter’s foiling State Department efforts in the region was “near traitorous.”
Carter has made the familiar assertion that critics of Israel cannot get a fair hearing in the United States. “Because of powerful political, economic and religious forces in the U.S.,” he writes, “Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media and most American citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories.” Yet that lie was quickly and embarrassingly exposed when prominent Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz offered Carter the opportunity to debate and Carter refused.
Since the end of his ignominious presidency, Carter has made a career of coddling the world’s despots, from Robert Mugabe to the dreadful North Korean father and son to Fidel Castro and Yassir Arafat.
Oddly, this was the same president who announced that under his watch, American foreign policy would place a higher priority on human rights. Democrats who support the state of Israel might want to start questioning their leaders about how they will deal with the problem of Jimmy Carter.
Aint it amazing how most Jews seem to fear and/or loath the Israel-loving Christians in the GOP more than they do the growing Muslim-loving wing inside their own party.
For the life of me, I cannot comprehend what goes on in their heads.
Perhaps you should ask your dear County Treasurer what he thinks about GWB's policy re: Israel, or whether or not he regards Jews as highly as he does Jesse Jackson, or Congressman Ellison (the first Muslim in Congress), or Jimmah Carter.
You MIGHT be shocked at his answer.
SOME things are more important than adding a row of numbers up on a county ledger, dontcha think?
Maybe they will SEE it, but 99-percent wont read it.
It takes a concerted media cliff-notes barrage exposing the anti-Jew tone of the book to REALLY get out Carter's message.
And of course, no self-respecting leftist national media type would EVER write such a story.
Ping to the post replied-to.
In general, the GOP needs well-spoken members/candidates in national leadership positions who can explain the various Republican positions, and NOT be 'ashamed' of them.
And it needs spokespeople who are not afraid to point the finger at Democraps and accuse them of promoting seditionist policies, which they ARE.
The GOP in '06 were, in general, wimps. Afraid to go after the traiterous media, or the near-traiterous Murtha. (Hey, Timothy McVeigh was a military veteran TOO!! So why this fear of speaking the truth about these anti-American "vets")
"How do Democrats solve their Jimmy Carter problem?"
Try Polonium-210?
They'll do what they have always done...ignore it and rely on the public's lack of memory retention.
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