Think he'll be able to stay awake for that one?
House Speaker John Boehner may be getting plastered
even by the conservative press for the stunt of inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to the House on the "dangers" posed by Iran, a transparent attempt to disrupt Obama foreign policy in the region in favor of the more bomb-oriented approach preferred by Netanyahu and American neoconservatives, but he's
not backing down.
“The House of Representatives is a equal branch of the government, and we have a right to do it, and we did it,” the Ohio Republican said Tuesday morning after a closed meeting of House Republicans. “And I’m frankly proud of the fact the prime minister has accepted our invitation, and will be here on March 3 to talk to the members of Congress about the serious threat that Iran poses, and the serious threat of radical Islam.”
So there. The Republican House seems to frequently defend doing stupid or insulting things under the banner of their
right to do stupid or insulting things if they feel like it. (Cough, government shutdown, cough.) Deciding not to do the stupid or insulting thing because the rest of the nation considers it stupid or insulting doesn't seem to come up as often.
Boehner seems to be less eager to address the implications of inviting an ultra-hawkish foreign leader to rebut an American president's foreign policy on the same stage granted to that American president during the previous month. That it's meant as boon to Netanyahu and as an attempt to foul ongoing negotiations between the American president and Iran, specifically, isn't being denied. As is frequently the case, the House Republican obsession with doing damage to Obama seems to trump all else, but I still wonder at the optics of being seen as supporting a foreign leader—even an allied one—over their own.
House Republicans are on their own on this one. Not even Fox News is buying it, and that suggests Boehner should be looking for an escape hatch. He won't, of course—and Netanyahu isn't about to let him—but he should be.