The Israel lobby has exerted such a powerful influence on politicians in the US and the media, especially among Republicans, that this piece of news, which should be shocking, has not created much fuss.
Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the U.S. should support Israel even when its stances diverge with American interests, a new Bloomberg Politics poll finds. Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the U.S. must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.
Further illustrating how sharply partisan the debate has become, Republicans say they feel more sympathetic to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than to their own president, 67 percent to 16 percent, while Democrats are more sympathetic to President Barack Obama than to Israel’s prime minister, 76 percent to 9 percent.
Got that? They think that the US should support Israel even when its own interests are harmed by such support.
We already knew that the Republican party in Congress viewed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as their leader. But the huge margin in his favor by ordinary Republicans should come as a shock.
So basically we now have two parties in the US, the Democrats and Likud.
I really hope their current strategy backfires. The republicans have opened the door to get hammered on defense and national security issues -- they’re clearly not concerned with US interests at all.
I enjoyed the Iranian reaction recently: “we do not negotiate with political factions within other nations.” Boom.
I don’t know if you’ve read the piece about it at the Intercept, but they chalk it up largely to evangelicalism.
Of course, Republicans don’t have the most basic knowledge of or concern about what our interests are as people, anyway, so they’d be hard pressed even to discern what’s contrary to them. Pretty much every policy they promote is contrary to our interests.
That poll is really something. Dumbya Bush has a 46% favorable/46% unfavorable rating across the spectrum. How he can get a favorable rating from anyone not named Bush or Cheney is incomprehensible to me. But there’s good news too. The Reblican Party is 38% favorable/53% unfavorable, while the Democratic Party is 48% favorable/44% unfavorable. If the Dems could stop brown-nosing rich bankers and Wall Streeters they could do a lot better, I’d bet.
@3 moarscienceplz
If it makes you feel better, they lost a lot wall street money after Dodd-Frank pissed them off.
So basically we now have two parties in the US, the Democrats and Likud.
Isn’t it misleading to classify this along party lines? The quote says that 1/3 of Democrats are pro-Israel and 1/3 of Republicans aren’t, a significant fraction in both cases.
I meant pro-Israeli interests above US interests
I’d welcome our new Hebrew overlords but they’ve been in control of US policy since before I was born & I turned 60 last year.
But remember, kids -- Democrats are traitors, Republicans are patriots.
Further to my point above: