On March 3rd, 2015 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress for the third time, tying a record previously held only by Winston Churchill. That same evening the American Secretary of State was in Switzerland negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran – precisely the deal John Boehner had invited Netanyahu to sabotage in the People’s House.
With this invitation the Republican Congress was conducting its own foreign policy, one at odds with the State Department’s, and thumbing its nose at the president. Netanyahu’s appearance was an attempt to undermine American foreign policy. The Republican invitation was a potential violation of the Logan Act and it placed the interests of a foreign nation before our own.
As Netanyahu stood at the podium where presidents deliver their State of the Union addresses, Republicans were ecstatic. Netanyahu was the president Obama would never be – right-wing, uncompromising, eager for war – and White. The Israeli Prime Minister also represented the values of a nation Republicans have long admired and emulated – a land of fighters, where religion blends with governance and a favored ethnic or religious group runs the country.
Update 11/9/2016:
Republicans got the president they always wanted.
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