Cantor Recants

Soon-to-be House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is desperately trying to explain away the promise he made to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last Wednesday.

Cantor huddled with Netanyahu just prior to the prime minister's meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton was expected to reaffirm the American commitment to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and opposition to Israeli settlement expansion. Cantor wanted Netanyahu to know that he had his back.

Cantor's office itself put out a statement bragging about his pledge to Netanyahu:

Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington," the readout continued. "He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other.

For now, forget Cantor's ridiculous assertion that the security of Israel and the United States are "reliant upon the other." No, the United States provides Israel with the security assistance to survive -- it is not the other way around.

But lay that aside. It is Cantor's statement of loyalty to Netanyahu that is the shocker. Specifically, it is his promise that he would ensure that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives "will serve as a check" on U.S. Middle East policy.

Almost immediately, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's bureau chief in Washington, Ron Kampeas, declared that Cantor's statement was "extraordinary." He wrote that he could not "remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the President."

Kampeas was clearly shocked, but he was understating the enormity of Cantor's offense. Cantor's pledge of allegiance to a foreign leader would be remarkable, and deeply offensive, even if the foreign country in question were Canada or the United Kingdom, our two closest allies with whom we have few policy differences.

The United States has major policy differences with Israel, and has had them for decades, most notably over settlements, the occupied West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, etc. Israel is also the largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world, which means that the President of the United States has every right to express those differences firmly and clearly.

On the other hand, no American official -- by any stretch of the imagination -- has the right to tell the government of Israel, or any foreign government, that he stands with the foreign leader against his own president. It is one thing to oppose particular US policies; it is quite another to tell a foreign leader, "I'm with you, not my president."

Of course, Cantor was just being honest. Although he does oppose virtually all of President Obama's policies (he's a Republican and that is what Republicans do), he supports 100% of Israeli policies. And although an extreme partisan domestically, when it comes to Israel, he supports whichever government is in power. He believes in the right to criticize this government, just not that one.

Cantor's mistake was not telling Prime Minister Netanyahu what everyone knows is true anyway, but telling the world what he said.

This is the classic Washington definition of a gaffe (i.e., inadvertently speaking an inconvenient truth).

In this case, the gaffe produced a firestorm.

And this is where I consider the possibility that Cantor simply doesn't understand what he's doing.