In case you missed it, yesterday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech before Congress eviscerating Obama’s policy toward Iran and triggering a complete meltdown amongst Democrats and liberal talking heads.
I included the rail-jumping from MSNBC institution Chris Matthews in a previous post, but something he said during his rant has been nagging at me ever since I blew it off and hit “publish”:
Speaking to Thomas Roberts shortly after Netanyahu’s speech ended, Matthews said definitively, “This man from a foreign government walked into the United States legislative chamber and tried to take over foreign policy.”“He said you should trust me, not your president on this,” Matthews continued, describing the tone of Netanyahu’s remarks. “I’m the man you should trust, I’m your true leader on this question of U.S. geopolitics. If you want to protect yourself, you must listen to me and not this president.”Calling the situation “startling,” Matthews said, “It’s a remarkable day when the leaders of the opposition in Congress allowed this to happen. Think it through, what country in the world would let a foreign leader come in and attempt to rest from the president control of U.S. foreign policy?”“This was a takeover attempt by Netanyahu with his complying American partners to take American foreign policy out of the hands of the president,” he concluded.
Watch:
Man from a foreign government. Leaders from the opposition. Am I in way too deep here, or does it sounds like Matthews is accusing Republicans of actually conspiring with Netanyahu to achieve some sort of coup?
It may have seeped out of someone like Chris Matthews, but this is still an important tweak in the narrative and we shouldn’t ignore it if it self-perpetuates beyond MSNBC’s audience. Up until now, we’ve heard a whole lot of moaning over breaches of etiquette and snubs and boycotts and how dare he tell us how to live our lives; we haven’t yet heard much out of the substantive policy wheelhouse (read: anything that actually matters in terms of preventing Iran from blowing us all to hell.)
This feels like a dog whistle. Eventually, Democrats are going to have to pivot away from the sandbox politics they’ve been playing since Boehner announced the visit and confront Netanyahu’s indictment of their deal with Iran; but it would be much easier to make the transition if they could somehow force the public to focus less on the impending disaster of a nuclear Iran and more on this idea that Republicans and the Israeli government are colluding to undermine Obama at the expense of the safety and security of the American people.
Intrigue for the hell of it isn’t something Netanyahu has time for, but if it helps them regain control of this spiraling situation, I’m willing to bet Democrats will take that narrative all the way to the bank.
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