Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is crashing parties on both sides of the Atlantic. The difference between his visit to the Paris photo op solidarity rally, and his planned visit to the United States Congress, is that he invited himself to Paris. In the US, he is actually being invited by the Republican House Speaker, John Boehner, to come to the United States to undermine the President of the United States, American foreign policy, American unity on the international stage, and the Constitution’s separation of powers.
Obama and European leaders are reportedly near to closing a deal on the oversight of Iran’s nuclear program after nearly a year of delicate multilateral negotiations. Republicans and Netanyahu oppose this deal. Congressional Republicans plan to pass new sanctions against Iran in order to derail the deal, though the president has promised to veto new sanctions. Boehner invited Netanyahu to address Congress about the sanctions, and neither of them notified the White House. The two men have different uses for each other, but together they are crossing a very serious line.
For starters, it’s completely unconstitutional. The conservative Roberts Supreme Court ruled as recently as 2012 that Congress cannot pass a law that abrogates the State Department’s primacy in the execution of foreign policy. Only the Executive branch sets foreign policy. That’s not an opinion, that’s a Constitutional fact. Were the White House to justifiably try to stop this dog and pony show, Congress would have set up a dire Constitutional crisis. Republicans are relying on the President being agreeable while they trample the separation of powers.
This takes gridlock to a dangerous, scary place. We all know that Washington is dysfunctional, that rancor is the rule. We know Boehner can’t smile during the State of the Union. Fine. But there are supposed to be certain things that are beyond the pale. Behind closed doors, the U.S. government works together on things that are objectively good, like corralling nuclear proliferation. Now that Republicans dominate Congress, giving Obama a noogie is more important than working together to prevent a nuclear showdown between the Shia arc and the Sunni/Israeli coalition? This is not using your media minions to convince half the country that the President is a Muslim. This is something that a responsible party would not mess around with.
It makes the U.S. look like a basket case on the world stage. More at the link under the picture.
