The Israel Factorpanel was asked to do some extra reading this week. Among other things, we wanted them to take a look at the latest Republican debate - held last week in South Carolina - and evaluate the positions the candidates have taken on the most pressing issue - Iran.
As we've written in the past, the candidates' stance on this issue is crucial to the Israel observer, and to some degree will be the most decisive item on the agenda as far as Israel goes.
A fairly significant part of this debate was dedicated to Iran. One reason this issue returned to the fore of the foreign policy debate is the U.S.-Iran speedboat stand-off in the Strait of Hormuz. As I wrote at the beginning of the week, the Democrats cannot compete with the Republicans when it comes to aggressive rhetoric on Iran, even if they want to. And the South Carolina debate was a clear manifestation of this. Some of the candidates were making blatantly threatening remarks, and none, saving Ron Paul, tried to downplay the significance of the boat incident.
We sent the panel the part of the debate dealing with Iran (read it here) and asked the panelists to rank the responses made by each of the participants. The panel scored 1 for the least acceptable position, and 5 for the most favored.
The results:
1. Thompson and Huckabee did make the headlines, but not the best impression on the panel. Thompson said that, "One more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they're looking forward to seeing," while Huckabee was all for sending those who harrassed American forces to see the "gates of Hell." Apparently, some panel members thought these remarks were harsher than necessary. While both were evaluated positively, the majority on the panel gave them no more than a 3.
2. McCain and Giuliani have a similar average but for slightly different reasons: McCain, with his relatively measured response ("don't think that this wasn't a serious situation of the utmost seriousness in one of the most important waterways in the world"), was acceptable to all panelists. He got a score of 4 from all of the panelists save two (who gave him a 3 and a 5), showing that they all liked what he said, but weren't completely bowled over.
With Giuliani, however, the story is different: Only three panelists gave him a score of 3 ? the others were divided between those who thought he was great and others who felt he was too blatant. The latter camp was, for the most part, the same panelists who gave Giuliani the low marks in the general ranking of the candidates, and those who seem to think that Israel would be better off with another Clinton presidency.
3. We did not expect Ron Paul to fare well with the panel, but since he was part of the debate we've decided to include his name in this question. Rosner's Mailbox has been filled over the past two weeks with letters from Paul supporters, reacting to my interview with him. And some of them took the opportunity to protest, and not for the first time, my decision not to include his name in the Israel Factor surveys. It is now easier to see why such an inclusion would be a waste of time.
4. By the way, Paul actually did better than I thought he would. One panelist even gave him a 3.
5. Romney also fared quite well with the panel. I suspect that the reason why he did not do as well as Giuliani is because the panelists do not trust him to the same extent ? hence his lower marks for similar comments. This is true for all the candidates: the panel does not give them marks based on their debate performance per se, but rather on the performance in the context of a general assessment of their candidacies and policies.
6. As we did in the past, and more than once, this was another opportunity to check with the panel how it feels about Republicans vs. Democrats on the issue of Iran. The outcome was similar to those in earlier surveys:
It's not a unanimous belief of the entire panel, but comes fairly close. Six of the panelists prefer the GOP when it comes to dealing with Iran
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