The Netanyahu Visit Goes From Bad to Hilarious

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

09 February 15

mong the many things that John Boehner is not, prominent among them is, "a competent ratfker." I'm sure that Boehner and his colleagues in the monkeyhouse leadership thought inviting Benjamin Netanyahu to come over here and submarine the president and the administration on the negotiations with Iran was a brilliant idea when they thought it up. Once Operation Suckup went into effect, however, almost nothing went right and now, of course, everybody's blaming everybody else.

Netanyahu was invited by the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, to address Congress on March 3, an invitation Boehner originally described as bipartisan. The move angered the White House, which is upset about the event coming two weeks before Israeli elections and the fact that Netanyahu, who has a testy relationship with President Obama, is expected to be critical of U.S. policy on Iran. "It appears that the speaker of Congress made a move, in which we trusted, but which it ultimately became clear was a one sided move and not a move by both sides," Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told 102 FM Tel Aviv Radio on Friday. The interviewer asked if that meant Netanyahu had been "misled" into believing Boehner's invitation was bipartisan, a characterization Hanegbi did not contest.

I guess the one thing that happened that neither the Israelis nor Boehner counted on -- and why would they anyway? -- was that the Democratic members of Congress would stand up together and deny Netanyahu their support for his extended campaign stop in Washington. Everybody's scrambling to cover their nuts now, and any doubts that Nancy Pelosi is a more effective leader of a caucus than Boehner should now be sunk in the Tidal Basin. The whole thing is a farce and should be abandoned at once. It's not like there aren't more places here for this guy to give his stump speech.