Tuesday, April 1, 2014

INCREDIBLE The War Party Oligarch that Has Presidential Hopefuls Groveling

By Patrick Buchanan

Is the Republican Party's Middle East policy up for bid?

For four days ending Sunday, a quartet of presidential hopefuls trooped to Las Vegas to attend the
annual gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Impresario: Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas-Macau casino mogul whose fortune is estimated at $39 billion — 8th richest man on the planet — and who dumped $92 million into the election of 2012.

Adelson kept Newt Gingrich alive with a $15 million infusion of ad money, gutting Romney, and then sank $30 million into Mitt's campaign.

This time Sheldon wants to buy himself a winner.

Ari Fleischer, press secretary to Bush 43, and a member of Adelson's RJC fiefdom, put it plain and simple: "The 'Sheldon Primary' is an important primary. ... anybody running for the Republican nomination would want to have Sheldon at his side."

One such man is Jeb Bush, son and brother to presidents, who was the prize bull at Sheldon's cattle show. Daniel Ruth of the Tampa Bay Times speculates on Jeb's motive in showing up:

"Would you slink into Las Vegas to schmooze gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson who regards GOP presidential nominees as if they were trophy heads mounted in his den, if you had no interest in the White House? Bush is not going to Vegas to catch Meat Loaf's act at Planet Hollywood."

The 2016 presidential hopefuls "are falling at his feet," said a veteran Republican strategist of the 80-year-old oligarch. Each of those who came — Bush, Chris Christie, and Govs. Scott Walker and John Kasich — apparently auditioned, one by one, before the godfather.

In 2016, says Adelson's top political adviser Andy Abboud, Sheldon's "bar for support is going to be much higher. ... There's going to be a lot more scrutiny."

Guess that means no more Newts.

Victor Chaltiel, a major donor and Adelson friend who sits on the board of Las Vegas Sands, tells us Sheldon "doesn't want a crazy extremist to be the nominee." Adds Shawn Steel, a big California GOP money man, Sheldon is a "very rational guy."

Perhaps. But last fall at Yeshiva University, this "very rational guy" gave this response to a question from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on whether he supports U.S. negotiations on Iran's nuclear program:

"No. What do you mean support negotiations? What are we going to negotiate about? What I would say is, 'Listen, you see that desert out there, I want to show you something.' ... You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, 'OK let it go.'

"So, there's an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn't hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever.

"And then you say, 'See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development.

"'You want to be peaceful. Just reverse it all, and we will guarantee that you can have a nuclear power plant for electricity purposes, energy purposes.'"

Adelson's response was recorded by Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss website who was at Yeshiva and filmed the interview. Weiss says the audience cheered Adelson's proposed nuclear strike on Iran and no one on the stage, not Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, peeped a word of dissent.

And this is a "very rational guy," who doesn't want "a crazy extremist to be the nominee"?

This is someone Republican presidential candidates must appease, if they don't want tens of millions in attack ads run against them?

This is someone the Republican presidential hopefuls must hearken to now?

Again, so it would seem.

During his talk before the few dozen members of the RJC, Gov. Chris Christie recounted his recent trip to Israel: "I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories" and came "to understand the military risk that Israel faces every day."

Christie's effort at bonding boomeranged. An angry Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America confronted Christie to demand that he explain just what he meant by "occupied territories."

For half a century, the United States has considered the West Bank occupied land where Israeli settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Whatever Christie's response, it did not satisfy the ZOA or Klein who declared: "Either [Christie] doesn't understand the issue, or he's hostile to Israel."

Whereupon Christie, in a private audience with Adelson, apologized.

A source close to Adelson told Politico that Christie made clear "that he misspoke when he referred to the 'occupied territories.' And he conveyed that he is an unwavering friend and committed supporter of Israel, and was sorry for any confusion that came across as a result of the misstatement."

The governor is a tough guy, but this sounds like groveling.

Is this what Republican presidential candidates must do now?

Kowtow to this fattest of fat cats who wants to buy himself an American war on Iran?

Is that what has become of the party of Reagan?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?
COPYRIGHT 2014 CREATORS.COM


6 comments:

  1. Pat is OK.
    It is nice to see his articles posted here at EPJ.
    His blind spot for Reagan is as amusing as the blind spot many have for Rand.

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    Replies
    1. Sure, Reagan is not exactly a model of non-intervention, but he was more restrained than the previous few administrations. With respect to Israel, how do you think Adelson would respond to a candidate whose platform matches Reagan's policy record?
      http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/if-obama-treated-israel-like-reagan-did-he-d-be-impeached-1.400542

      Delete
  2. Adelson is a Republican but he is nowhere near a conservative. He is a Neo-Con, which as many people know, is an offshoot of the Trotskyite left who managed to blind side a large number of Americans by adding the word "conservative" to their name. The very same people who dragged us into the Iraq war, who tried to drag us into war with Syria, and who are now trying to drag us into war with Russia and Iran. It is a brilliant example of misdirection.

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    Replies
    1. Adelson is very much so a conservative. The notion that conservatives do not support American empire and war is completely destroyed by the simple fact that warmongers and empire peddlers, rather than peace-and-freedom candidates like Ron Paul, are voted into the white house by "ordinary" conservatives. It is also destroyed by the fact that conservatives have historically always supported state intervention in any number of things.
      So either Adelson represents conservatism, or the word can be applied to so few people, relatively speaking, as to be meaningless.
      Pat Buchanan is a paleo-conservative, and Pat is in the minority. Nationalism, patriotism, exceptionalism, war, empire and the "troops" are the order of the day with rank and file conservatives.

      "The very same people who dragged us into the Iraq war"

      Bush was re-elected by the majority of conservatives. I rest my case.

      Delete
  3. After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

    Measuring political performance by traditional metrics is a waste of time in a world where the people will simply vote for change. We saw it in Greece, we saw it in Spain, and now we’ve seen it in France. Next up, European elections in six weeks’ time.

    Public disaffection with the world’s leaders is growing by the day — you can feel it — and nowhere was that made more apparent recently than in Holland last week when Barack Obama, halfway through his tour of Europe, took to the stage alongside Dutch PM Mark Rutte.

    Obama, so used to adoring hordes — not only at home, but wherever in the world he is reading a teleprompter giving a soaring lesson in oratory — was presented with the answer to the age-old question about the sound of one hand clapping after he concluded, at a press conference, remarks espousing the USA’s “core values” of privacy, the rule of law, and individual rights. ([See the video below] to watch the most awkward end to a speech since Sally Field accepted the Oscar for Best Actress in 1985.)

    People can’t even bring themselves to be polite to the incumbent political class anymore — not even to a rock star like Obama. Make no mistake, from Ukraine to Holland, from the United Kingdom and France to Greece, Italy, and beyond, politicians are under immense pressure to “do something” in order not to lose their grasp on power.
    From Nobel to Ignoble

    http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2014/04/after-many-summer-dies-swan.html

    no where to run.....................

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  4. The Shame of American Politics: GOP Presidential Hopefuls Trek to Las Vegas for Adelson Blessing

    The most frightening scenario is for corrupt money to dictate our politics. Casinos may no longer be mobbed up the way they were in the 1950s and 1960s, but they are still significantly implicated in government corruption.

    The perniciousness of this growing plutocracy was on full display on Saturday, as GOP governors Scott Walker, Chris Christie and John Kasich trekked off to Las Vegas in an attempt to attract hundreds of millions in campaign donations from sleazy casino lord Sheldon Adelson. Since Adelson is allegedly worth $37 billion, he could fund the Republican side of a presidential election (which costs $1 billion) all by himself. In the last presidential election he is said to have donated $100 million.

    There is no way to mince words here. These practices are absolutely disgusting.

    The problems with having one man have $37 billion and with his ability to buy candidates their elections are that any one man might be extremely eccentric. What if he wanted to start the Iraq War up again? Do we have to do it?

    http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/01/the-shame-of-american-politics-gop-presidential-hopefuls-trek-to-las-vegas-for-adelson-blessing/

    ReplyDelete