An article in today’s issue of The Jewish Week reports on John Kerry’s seemingly inexplicable problem in Florida:
Sen. Joseph Lieberman sounded an ominous warning last week when he [said] Sen. John Kerry’s failure to speak substantively about Israel during campaign appearances [in Florida] had weakened his support among Jewish Democrats.
“I was here two or three weeks ago and this question came up a few times, not from the media [but] from people,” said Lieberman . . .
“Why isn’t he talking about Israel?” he said voters wanted to know. . .
Lieberman . . . is not alone in urging Kerry to speak about Israel to Florida voters. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) have privately counseled it, as has a group of 50 South Florida Jewish leaders who met with Kerry two weeks ago.
Biden said that both he and Kerry believe it was a “mistake … to not have mentioned Israel in his acceptance speech. We’re trying to figure out how to deal with it now.”
Hey, I’ve got it! He can say he has a plan!
Then he can say he doesn’t know what will await him when he actually takes office, so he can’t tell us what it is right now!
Charles Krauthammer’s column today says that Kerry actually does have a plan to eliminate America’s isolation in the world:
For understandable reasons, however, he will not explain how on the eve of an election.
Think about it: What do the Europeans and the Arab states endlessly rail about in the Middle East? . . . What single issue most isolates America from the overwhelming majority of countries at the United Nations? . . . Israel.
In what currency, therefore, would we pay the rest of the world in exchange for their support in places like Iraq? The answer is obvious: giving in to them on Israel. . .
John Kerry says he wants to “rejoin the community of nations.” There is no issue on which the United States more fails the global test of international consensus than Israel.
You want to appease the “international community”? Sacrifice Israel. Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of “peace.”
I think Kerry does have a plan. It’s “A Non-Nuanced Middle East Peace Plan.”