Imagine if a non-Jewish critic of the Israel lobby used the verb in my headline. Just imagine. Wouldn’t happen. They might take away the guy’s job.

Also remember that Mike Desch reported that George H.W. Bush felt that he had lost his bid for reelection in 1992 in part because he had taken on the Israel lobby (a lesson not lost on George II, but lost on all our political journalists).

OK now go to 1:18 of the video below. Jacob Heilbrunn, student of neoconservatism, is answering a question by the entertaining Dmitri Simes, the head of the Nixon Center, which is posed around 1:10. Simes hates neocons, is a Putin apologist, has a fun, heavy accent, is I think Jewish, and somehow manages to have gotten and maintained control of the Nixon Center. Simes’s question is about the irresistible hold of neoconservatism– why no Republican president has challenged the neoconservatives.

And note that Heilbrunn opens the question up to the idea of the Israel lobby hamstringing all presidents, Republican and Democrat. Heilbrunn: