Come On, Man!

NFL Monday Night Football fans will recognize that title from the pre-game show which highlights bonehead plays or stupid calls from games the day or week before. It’s not a highlight you want to be featured on.

If politics were football, the pre-game show on Monday night would have a field day. The biggest problem would be which boneheads to feature, given the time constraints. Neither of the two major political parties would be exempt, but the GOP has dominated bonehead plays for the past couple of months starting with the emergence of Gov. Rick Perry as the leading GOP candidate for President.

Come on, man!

But the most recent bonehead call was the GOP reaction to the President’s jobs proposal which calls on millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share in reducing the deficit while investing money in programs that create jobs. Immediately, House Speaker John and other GOP leaders called the measure “class warfare.”

What about the point that billionaire Warren Buffett made that his workers – middle income wage earners – pay higher tax rates than he does? Or what about the fact that the income gap between the rich and the poor in this country widens every year? Or that in 2010, median household income declined, the poverty rate increased and the number of Americans without health insurance coverage has topped 50 million? Are we expected to ask these already overburdened Americans to pay more to protect tax cuts for the wealthiest?

Come on, man!

Foreign affairs is not exempt from GOP bonehead plays either. It used to be that politics ended at the water’s edge, but that was a long time ago and both parties have contributed to that unfortunate decline. So, now, while the President and Secretary of State Clinton are engaged in intensive negotiations to deal with the looming vote on statehood of Palestine in the U.N., some GOP leaders, including Governor Perry, are accusing the President of throwing Israel under the bus in these negotiations in the hopes the GOP can gain some Jewish American votes in the next election.

Fortunately, most Jewish Americans are smart enough to realize it is not in the short term or long term interest of the U.S., or Israel, to encourage the isolation of Israel in that part of the world.

As NYT columnist Tom Friedman wrote recently, “I’ve never been more worried about Israel’s future. The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.

“This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/opinion/sunday/friedman-israel-adrift-at-sea-alone.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman

So, if the GOP were really earnest in its support of Israel, it would not be encouraging the intransigence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu and the Likud Party. But, emboldened by the Republican win in the recent election in New York’s 9th District which is heavily Jewish and traditionally Democrat, the GOP sees an opportunity to peel off some of the traditional Jewish American vote in the next election.

Come on, man!

Gerald E. Lavey