What the Israeli lobby wants, the Israeli lobby gets, and it makes no bones about pressing its case. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:
One great victory for Israel using that technique was the 1992 defeat of George H. W. Bush by Bill Clinton. Bush had dared to withhold guarantees on loans sought to fund Israel’s expansion of its settlements, clearly a genuine American interest as the settlements were a violation of international law. Going into the election, he appeared to be the much stronger candidate, but then the captive media starting to write about how the economy was in bad shape, which was not true, and switched over to deeply negative coverage of his campaign. The Lobby also heavily contributed financially to the Clinton campaign. George H.W. subsequently privately blamed the Israel Lobby for his defeat, a lesson his son George W. clearly absorbed in that he took pains to never anger Israel. He went rather the other way, surrounding himself with Jewish neocons as his national security policy team, which in turn produced Afghanistan and, quite plausibly, was the driving force behind the catastrophic attack on Iraq.
Legislators who have been dethroned by Israel using the same technique are Senators Chuck Percy and William Fulbright as well as congressmen Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney and James Traficant. They all faced credible, well-funded opponents and lost their seats. And the Israel Lobby, behind it all, never even had to complain about their views on Israel. In fact, it was believed to be better to not raise that issue directly.
