Joe Scarborough: Rick Perry, Mitt Romney Dangerously Undermining President Obama’s Israel Policy

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday, host Joe Scarborough took GOP presidential frontrunners Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tx) and Mitt Romney to task for undercutting the President’s diplomatic efforts. On the eve of a UN vote on Palestinian statehood, Romney issued a statement with the familiar refrain that the President has “thrown Israel under the bus,” while Perry, flanked by conservative Jewish leaders, accused President Obama of a policy of “appeasement.”

Scarborough was heavily critical of Perry and Romney for undermining the President, even going so far as to say their posturing is “dangerous, and it’s not good for our country.”

The former GOP congressman prefaced his remarks with his own pro-Israel bona fides, and summed up the GOP candidates’ actions by saying “With one of the most explosive situations on the globe, and we’ve got Rick Perry and Mitt Romney posing, for political purposes, and undermining our president. That is dangerous, and it’s not good for our country.”

Scarborough revisited the theme, referring to Mitt Romney’s call to cut off US aid in retaliation for the statehood resolution, saying, “As a lifelong supporter of Israel, I think this is reckless and irresponsible because it undermines our president, but secondly, cutting off aid undermines Israel.”

Perry, in particular, was trying to leverage the recent GOP victory in New York’s 9th district, which many see as a referendum on President Obama’s Israel policy, by attacking the President while both were in New York yesterday.

This is not a new phenomenon, and Scarborough is right that the tenor and timing of these attacks is dangerous. Being able to criticize our leaders is what makes this country great, to be sure, but Perry and Romney are not only overheated in their rhetoric, their apparent understanding of diplomacy is half-baked. I say “apparent” because both of these men surely know that there’s a huge gulf between the public posturing of each of the parties involved, and the back-channel realities.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.