I've been largely ignoring this situation, but yesterday, Israel's prime minister, Netanyahu, was given a chance to speak before a joint session of Congress.
This was Boehner's attempt at a direct slap in the face to Obama, and Bibi wants to discontinue talks with Iran on nuclear enrichment and sanctions. It is also an unprecedented move, to undercut the President in purely international matters.
The rule has always previously been "politics stops at the water's edge", meaning that a unified governmental face is always presented to outsiders. But the GOP's insistance on politicizing everything having to do with Obama continues, and no social pressure is sufficient to cut back their attempts to keep him from accomplishing anything (witness the continuous use of the filibuster over the last six years, for instance).
But I think this move might have backfired, on a couple of levels. One, the GOP seems generally fine with giving the President more power (witness their actions on trade negotiations, for instance, as well as their continued inaction on immigration and spending), so knee-capping the office of the President doesn't seem to have gone over well with the base.
Plus, Bibi's speech wasn't terribly coherent. He said that the Iranian government is composed of genocidal maniacs, and that talks are useless, but that Iranians will nevertheless become desperate for talks if the sanctions are given more time to run their course. Left unanswered were why economic coercion would work on those "maniacs" and why Israeli polling shows Iran as the fourth-most important issue in the upcoming election if Iran is an "existential threat".
Similarly unexplored was the question of how well Iran's government would possibly function if, as Bibi seems to want, he were allowed to install it (preferably after a war, it seems).
Although I will say that I took a brief look at RedState last night (for the first time ever), and Bibi was being called the "Churchill of our time" there (an insane assertion, on a number of levels). I think the person writing that particular article didn't much pay attention to what was said, based on his comments.
All of this leads me to wondering about where politics is headed, over the next couple of years. Thus far, the GOP majority in the House has shown itself completely incapable of governing; hopefully that will turn around, somehow. I suspect it will require the ouster of Boehner for that to happen (at a minimum).
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