The Tucker Carlson-Mike Huckabee debate is a battle for the GOP’s soul on Israel |
The most revealing part of the nearly three-hour verbal sparring match between Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee last week came about 30 minutes from the end, when Carlson distilled the feelings of a meaningful swath of US Republicans.
“I’ve never met an American that thinks — other than, like, the people who have ideological reasons to pretend they think it — that the imminent threat to America is anything having to do with Iran,” Carlson said. “The imminent threats to America include, like, bankruptcy from too much debt, your son OD-ing on fentanyl, your neighborhood completely changing” due to immigration.
He went on, “Can you feel the resentment? Because it’s real… I’m mad at my lawmakers for not protecting my country with the care they’ve protected Israel.”
Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, shot back. “They are the tip of the spear,” he said of Israel. “Every enemy they have is our enemy. Things that are targeted toward us often go through them.”
In the days since Carlson, the far-right US pundit, posted his interview with Huckabee, almost all of the attention it’s gotten has focused on two things: Huckabee saying he’d be “fine” with Israel conquering much of the Middle East, and Carlson’s cascade of falsehoods, embellishments, elisions, misdirections and conspiracy theories, many of them antisemitic.
But those controversies point to something larger: Carlson and Huckabee represent two opposing poles of Republican thought on Israel that have become increasingly irreconcilable.
On one side is Huckabee, a dyed-in-the-wool Evangelical Christian Zionist whose maximalist support for Israel, rooted in the Bible, includes backing West Bank settlements. Huckabee’s vision dovetails with a broader Republican posture that sees the Jewish state as the front line of a larger civilizational conflict and an indispensable American ally.
On the other side is Carlson, an avatar of the Republican Party’s isolationist wing, whose pining for a Christian America of an earlier era is often laced with antisemitic ideas. This camp sees US support for Israel as a dangerous siphon, sucking away American resources that should be devoted to fixing problems at home.
Those two approaches do not represent all Republicans — many don’t connect with either or are somewhere in the middle. But they are now battling for the heart of the party and the US president, with major implications for the Jewish state.
Carlson’s staccato drumbeat of antisemitic claims was exhausting, and watching Huckabee try to parry them was like witnessing a game of Whac-A-Mole on speed
Carlson’s staccato drumbeat of antisemitic claims was exhausting, and watching Huckabee try to parry them was like witnessing a game of Whac-A-Mole........