Posted on 03/16/2006 3:03:31 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
Al Gore got an endorsement for a second presidential bid in 2008 – from a Virginia congressman who blamed the Iraq war on American Jews.
Questioned about the contest, Democratic Rep. Jim Moran said: "I'd like to see him get into the race."
"He won the popular vote in 2000, and I think he's even stronger and more committed," Moran said yesterday on C-SPAN's Washington Journal. "But you know, he's got his own life and it's his decision to make."
A spokesman for Gore had no immediate reaction to Moran's comments.
Moran is not known as one of the most thoughtful members of Congress. He last made news in May when he blasted President Bush as someone who surrounds himself with yes men, labeling Vice President Dick Cheney "the biggest a-- kisser of all."
In an interview with the Raw Story website, Democrat Jim Moran of Virginia said, "The only actual news that [Bush] reads is the sports section. All the national news, all the opinions that he gets have been filtered, and it goes to his daily briefing that has already been pre-screened to give him what he wants to read. He doesn't read any books, and he doesn't talk with people that don't already agree with him. He's surrounded himself with ideological sycophants. And the biggest a-- kisser of all is Dick Cheney."
But his biggest faux pas came in 2003, when Moran, then a regional whip in the House of Representatives, was punished by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi after he suggested Jews were responsible for the push for war against Iraq.
At a question-and-answer session with anti-war activists, Moran said, "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing this. ... The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going and I think they should."
Pelosi said Moran's comments on the rationale for war "were not only inappropriate, they were offensive and have no place in the Democratic Party." Moran has also been criticized for taking money from Middle East sources with ties to terrorism – known as "the Wahhabi Lobby."
HAAAA! Guess the guy really liked the Hate America speech AlBore gave in Saudi Arabia a couple of months ago
He needs to be committed, but not to a Presidential run....
...I think he's even stronger stranger and more should be committed...
He and Gore must be smoking the same crack.
Boy wouldn't he be upset if Gore took on Lieberman (devout Jew) as a running mate again.
No surprise here then. Two peas in a pod.
Those guys should have a seance and try to contact their brains.
Fred Phelps, Jim Moron, which hate-mongering extremist will support Gore next, the ghost of Joseph Goebbles?
MoveOn.org, George Soros, and the rest of the mentally deficient nutjobs who hold the DNC's purse-strings will never let somebody as decent, moderate, and civil as Joe get nominated again.
No argument from ME on that one!!!! :-)
There are too many people I will never understand.
She denied it, of course, and then added "I've never used an ethnic, racial, anti-Semitic, bigoted, discriminatory, or prejudiced accusation against anybody. I've never done it. I've never even thought it."
....and there are millions who believe her, frighteningly enough.
Thanks for the clarification. (I sorta had it right)
(I have heard Moran say a lot of things that I vehemently disagreed with, but I don't support trying to make him out an anti-Semite for speaking the truth on this matter.)
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For a minute I thought this was going to be about Pat Buchanan.
"The American Jewish community, typically a source of much of the pacifist and internationalist sentiment in foreign policy, was surprisingly cordial to vigorous military action on this occasion."
You are quite mistaken. NYC and environs, LA, both Jewish strongholds, had the highest numbers in the country opposing the Iraq war.
Jewish liberals and spokespeople are vociferous opponents of the Iraq war.
Nonetheless, big MSM, heavily influenced by Jews such as Tom Friedman, more or less went along with this war.
Admittedly, this is beyond proof, but my lifetime observation of the NYT and Washington Post is that that they are quite dovish. But on this dubious enterprise, there was a green light. I think Jewsish sympathy toward Israel was decisive in the sense that it was the component of the intellectual coalition that probably would have sided with interminable U.N. foolishness had Israeli intersts not been on the table.
I used to read The New Republic a lot, considering it a liberal magazine and joyously reading occasional harsh critiques of liberal interest. Now, I suppose it is regarded more as Neocon. Still, I have heard publisher Marty Peretz say that he thought that his hand would shrivel if he ever reached for a Republican voting lever. Marty is an important player in opinion journalism. He puts out an unpredictable publication that is open to conservative ~and~ to liberal thought.
But when the subject of Israel arises, Marty is a completely lunatic hawk. He seems to me representative of a significant part of the Jewish intellectual media elite that goes into a whole altered state when the subject of Israel is on the table.
I can't prove it. You read, you weigh it. Sometimes you come to some small conclusions.
A close friend of my childhood, whom I now see about once a year, is a lawyer in Manhattan. My friend is a lifelong liberal Democrat, the sun of an ACLU chapter president. My friend is NO ANTI-SEMITE.
The last time I saw him we were talking over the war and I gingerly expressed my opinion that the perception among many Jews that Israeli interests were on the table was a important factor in building an adequate concensus at home to go after Saddam.
My friend -- to my considerable surprise -- said that he had recently been at a diner in NYC with a couple of hundred people who were connected to an Israeli business which my friend's firm represented. In other words, this was a Jewish dinner in New York.
My friend said that someone at the head table made a remark about the Iraq war (then still in its first year) and the entire room rose as one to give thunderous applause.
It is only an annecdote, but it was pursuasive to me.
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