Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

An Open Letter from Martin Eisenstadt to Sarah Palin:

Greetings from the Holy Land. Yes, that’s me in Bethlehem celebrating Christmas at the invitation of the Archbishop himself, an old friend and business acquaintance. Honoring the shepherd of Nazareth’s birthday at the site of his earthly entry was truly humbling, a potent reminder that society is best served when religion dominates the public square.

While kneeling before a stone wall inside the Grotto, I even had something of a spiritual epiphany.  Those of you familiar with my work might find this hard to believe, as on occasion I have been known to poke fun at the trans fat wing of our party, but what can I say? It happened. A voice in my head, which I have no doubt was Jesus himself, clearly instructed me to embrace Christianity and to dedicate myself to spreading his holy Gospel.  As my body convulsed and the tears streamed down my face, I recognized with absolute certainty what a fool I had been to back that homosexual-loving secularist Steve Schmidt against a great American and Christian like Sarah Palin.  I offer no excuse, except that I was taking an experimental dieting pill at the time which I now realize was making me irritable and clouding my thought process.

Brothers and sisters, I have seen the error of my ways and have asked God’s only son for his forgiveness.  Never in my life have I felt this complete, this at peace. (And I see no reason why my neocon friends should feel betrayed by this apparent renunciation of my Jewish half. Christians are the strongest supporters of Israel, the Jewish people and lax SEC regulations. )  I guess you could say I’ve been born again which means that I can’t be held responsible for anything I did before my rebirth, which means that Sarah Palin, according to our shared faith, must forgive me entirely and totally for any alleged or perceived slights that may have occurred in the past, including telling Carl Cameron that she didn’t know Africa was a continent.

Sarah, please know that I am sincerely sorry for any harm I may have caused you and that my passion for spreading freedom and democracy is just as strong as yours. Only now, after seeing God’s light, is it sinking in that someday you will be the anointed leader of the political party I have spent the last twenty-five years serving and promoting. Only now am I starting to properly appreciate how right you were to call for prayer sessions at the debate prep in Sedona.  Please know that I have joined the side of God, that I’m no longer a cynic, that I’ve worked on six presidential campaigns, that no one crafts a better apology than Marty Eisenstadt.  And in case you’re interested, I’m also the one who came up with the name, “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” and the slogan, “Country First”.  For your sake and God’s sake, don’t let these talents go to waste.  Use me. Hire me.  You won’t be sorry.    

I know what you’re saying. Talk is cheap. Words aren’t enough. You need me to show through action that I’m a changed man, that I can be trusted as a loyal soldier in the run-up to 2012, that I will never again stray to the side of heresy and defeat as represented by Giuliani, McCain and Romney.

And wouldn’t you know it?

 Just as I was agonizing over these feelings of shame and regret, a miracle happened. God put on FOX news a segment about the land and sea blockade of nearby Gaza and how anti-Semites and America haters are recklessly bandying about the term “concentration camp” to describe what’s going on.  Which is when it hit me like a brick.  The entrapped people of Gaza probably haven’t had the chance to read either of our books. How many times must I repeat the obvious?  To win this war on terror, we can’t just rely on bullets. We need to win their hearts and minds as well. 

As far as I am concerned, it is categorically racist to assume that the residents of Gaza only care about receiving food, medicine and freedom of movement, that they aren’t also craving role models and higher truths, the same truths that we Americans take for granted and that Sarah and I both espouse in our books.  If only our enemies the world over could read your words on freedom and moose hunting and what it was like to serve God as a beauty pageant queen, I have no doubt they would put down their rockets and come around to our way of thinking and living.

 As you can see from this photograph, capitalism is already alive and well in parts of independent Palestine. Lawyers representing Starbucks might argue that this play on words is a violation of international copyright law, but I’m a glass half full kind of guy, and to me imitation is the highest form of flattery.  We need to encourage these people’s love of capitalism and American values, not bog them down with frivolous lawsuits.  As you yourself once so eloquently stated regarding our mission in Afghanistan, “We’re fighting terrorists, securing democracy, building schools for children so there’s opportunity.” (debate with Joe Biden).

That’s why later today I will be heading south to the city of Rafah, on the Egyptian side of the Gaza Strip, to talk with the owner of an underground smuggling tunnel about providing the residents of Gaza with books and brochures that promote positive thinking and purposeful living.  As there is no other way to get goods in and out of Gaza, our niche products would face little to no competition. Sure, there are risks involved as the Israelis often bomb these tunnels and according to a strict interpretation of American law what we’re doing could be viewed as illegal, but let’s take a page from Ronald Reagan’s Latin America policy and think long term, not short term. Gaza is an untapped market with tremendous potential for profit and growth for all involved.  Don’t laugh. According to sources, some of the people down there have access to real dollars, Euros in fact, provided to them by NGO’s  and the like.  So let’s not miss this opportunity to make a buck while promoting education, freedom and representative government.  Because as we all know, one step leads to another and before you know it, the people of Gaza will have credit cards, advanced weaponry and Wii…but I’m getting ahead of myself. What’s important is that we owe it to the materially challenged residents of Gaza to share with them the secrets of our successes so one day they too can enjoy the fruits of the American dream free from government interference.  

In deference to your superior name recognition, it is my intention to include “Going Rogue” in our first smuggling run, exposing your book to the people of Gaza even before my own.  You have my word that I will do my best to keep costs down. It is my understanding that the tunnel charges two Euros per smuggled item in addition to a one time passage fee. But not to worry, due to the supply and demand reality on the ground, we should have no problem tacking on a healthy mark-up. And because this is a passion project for me, I will limit my own commission to 15%, not including expenses and bribes, of course.   

For our first tunnel run, we’ll likely need somewhere in the range of 5,000 books.  Who should I be contacting at HarpersCollins to make that happen?  Or if you prefer, have that person call me on my iphone (Scheunemann has the number) and if that doesn’t work, they can try the tunnel proprietor at 9721567432. I would normally suggest that we communicate through e-mail but given the sensitive nature of this endeavor, it is probably best not to put anything in writing. Thank you and Happy New Years.  May God bless you, your family, the Republican Party, our great country and all we hold dear.

And for those of you who owe a Christmas present or belong to an Eastern sect, my book “I am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man’s (Wildly Inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans” is still available on Amazon.

In the spirit of reconciliation, I am also providing a link to Sarah’s book, a great read, I must add.

(Martin Eisenstadt is a Republican strategist, corporate communications consultant  and political commentator who does regular appearances on television and radio. An expert on the Near East, Mr. Eisenstadt was a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI).

Do I think that the US and Israel will attack Iran before George Bush leaves office? Yes. Iran has become a thorn in too many sides. It meddles in the affairs of other countries. It is the only country bold enough to use the Holocaust as a card in its political feuds with Israel and the West.

Iran trains, funds and arms Hamas in Israel’s south and Hezbollah in Israel’s north. Understand. It is not just Israel and the US who have beef with Iran. Sunni and Christian Lebanese are none too happy about having a Persian trained Shia militia running wild across their country. While non-fundamentalist Palestinians are none too happy about having religious fanatics, trained, funded and armed by far away Iran, grind their earthly lives into a living hell. And then there are Iran’s neighbors, our petrol allies in the Gulf, from Arabia to the Emirates, Sunni and Arab, who fear and detest Shia Persian Iran even more than we or the Israelis.

So in the event of an attack, Iran will surely find itself alone, with no friends or sympathizers save leftist Americans and weak-willed Europeans. Iran chose this path of confrontation. It was not thrust on her. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how all this plays out.

Been meaning to blog from the AIPAC conference but most of what I wanted to articulate I’ve decided to self censor for security reasons. To the lady with purple hair who spent more time at the buffet than the caterers, Passover is the unleavened bread holiday, not the atonement one. Now you know why security cross checked your badge and why you were escorted out. Better luck next time fruits of Islam.

I am proud to announce that I recently accepted an offer from the McCain campaign to serve as “a Liaison with the Jewish community” and “foreign policy advisor”. Although I have in the past blamed the McCain campaign staff for dirty tricks against my candidate at the time, Rudolph Giuliani, I have come to recognize the importance of supporting John McCain at this crucial juncture in our country’s history. Israel is at risk. The dollar is at risk. The most cherished American symbol, the automobile, is at risk. So today more than ever before, let us unite for the common causes of liberty, of freedom, of family, of God. John McCain for President!

Okay. I’ve had a couple of drinks and I just saw something on TV that irked my goat. To those alter cocker Florida Jews who think “Barry” is a Jewish name while “Barak” is some scary boogie man name: “Barak” is the Hebrew word for thunder, you fools of life. I don’t know what you are. But you sure as hell ain’t Jews. I just returned from a trip to Israel where Jews wear on their skin the color of the desert, the sun. So, to Barry from Florida, stop being such a wuss.

Here’s a quick roundup on Obama News-for-Jews:

Advisor McPeak on NY and Miami

Sounds like Jeffrey Hart isn’t the only Obama friend who’s getting him in trouble (as we talked about a few days ago).

The Dartmouth Review responds. Turns out that “reformed” conservative, fomer Nixon speechwriter and now Obama supporter Jeffrey Hart (an “Obamacon”) was a student of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, and wrote a long piece about it in the DR (or ‘TDR’ as apparently they like to call it). Don’t know why no one noticed it sooner.

It’s an odd piece, and I’m not entirely sure I get his point, but in addition to reminiscing about “Christian existentialist” Rosenstock-Huessy (who was born Jewish, converted to Christianity and fled the Nazis to Dartmouth) and his book The Christian Future or the Modern Mind Outrun, Hart has this to say about Jews:

I had come to Dartmouth from Stuyvesant High School in New York City, which, though a public school, required an entrance exam. It was 85 percent Jewish and it seemed to me most of the students had their eyes on Harvard and usually its medical school. The intellectual culture was intense and exhilarating. The faculty to day [sic] would be university professors, but most were Jewish too, and excluded from the desirable. During the 1930s Harry Levin had trouble getting tenure at Harvard, so did Lionel Trilling at Columbia, because they were Jews…..

But where have all the Jews gone, now that Stuyvesant is mostly Asian? What about Harvard? What about medical school? Are the Jews settling for William and Mary? Rollins? Say it ain’t so.

Jeffrey, it ain’t so.

In any case, it’s now clear that Hart DID take classes from E R-H, though he apparently dropped out of Dartmouth and finished his degree at Columbia (because there were more Jewish professors there?).  I’ll leave it to others to decipher Hart.

As for Callahan, it’s still intriguing to think that the future King Abdullah II of Jordan spent his salad days kicking back with the Phi Delts singing “Louie, Louie” and smashing beer cans on his head. It’s no wonder he’s one of America’s biggest allies in the Middle East. And given that he’s surrounded by Iraq, Syria and Israel, I suspect there’s more than a few times that King Abdullah wishes he was back at Dartmouth. On the other hand, Abdullah’s mother was a secretarial assistant on the set of Lawrence of Arabia, so maybe he was just channeling Peter O’Toole.

Hats off to the Dartmouth Review for digging a little deeper. In today’s blog, A.S. Erickson writes:

I was reading through the preface of Prof. Hart’s Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe (published in 2001) when I came across this on Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. This seems to corroborate the speculation that Rosenstock’s maxim about the Citizen was often repeated in class.

[Rosenstock] had two phrases he repeated so often they remained in a student’s mind.

He would say, “History must be told.” He explained in various ways that history is to a civilization what personal memory is to an individual: an essential part of identity and a source of meaning.

He also said that the goal of education is the citizen. He defined the citizen in a radical and original way arising out of his own twentieth-century experience. He said that a citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-create his civilization.

Good digging. But I’m afraid that since this was written in 2001 (after Hart wrote the 1996 piece), it stills begs a few questions:

• Does Hart spell E R-H’s name right in the book? We’re still - at best - left with a Dartmouth English professor who neither cites his sources, nor even spells the name of his subject correctly. If an Ivy League English prof. can’t check the spelling of one of his esteemed colleague’s names correctly, it begs the question about the value of a Dartmouth education.
• Was Hart actually a student of E R-H? (we know he taught at Dartmouth, but the DR says he and E R-H probably didn’t overlap). In and of itself, this doesn’t corroborate that the Citizen quote was widespread, only that Hart used it more than once. The trick is to find someone else who remembers the quote.
• If he wasn’t a student, what’s his original source for the ‘96 quote? The DR can just ask him.
• The DR now puts the blame squarely on Callahan and/or Birzin, suggesting that they copped from Hart. Fair enough, but then I ask again, why would the Callahan quote be such a personal one “from his father?” If a man lies so cavalierly about his own father, what else is he lying about? His own resume? His own trackrecord at Dartmouth? Do we really want this guy representing us at the State Department working in anti-terrorism? We’ve been asking around the National Security community, and indeed, Callahan has a stellar record protecting America (and yes, even contributing to Bush/Cheney in 2004). If Hollywood was to depict a handsome, daring, athletic, patriotic, articulate diplomat, they couldn’t do better than Callahan. To read the Birzin piece in particular, the guy is one part Tom Cruise and one part Matt Damon (minus, of course, the Sarah Silverman thing).
• ….But, what happened at the Phi Delt house? The Birzin profile spends considerable time talking about Callahan’s experience cleaning up his frat, Phi Delta Alpha (not to be confused with Dartmouth’s Alpha Delta Phi, the inspiration for the film Animal House):
  

  Just before he took the reins as president, Phi Delt was put on social probation by the administration for a series of behavioral incidents and infractions by its members. Callahan was faced with the difficult task of finding a way “to reconcile the house’s objectives with the legitimate concerns of the Administration.”

  What’s interesting is that the general dates of that time period coincide with Jordan’s then-Prince (now King) Abdullah hanging out at the frat:

  Royalty visited Phi Delt in the 1980s. Prince Abdullah of Jordan hung out at Phi Delt in 1983, while visiting close friend George ‘Gig’ Faux ’84.

  
  Best as we can tell, Callahan took over as Phi Delt president from Gig Faux the next year and had to clean up “the mess.” I have no reason to doubt Callahan’s loyalty to his country, but should a high-ranking State Department expert on counterterrorism be old frat buddies with the King of Jordan? As one of our strongest allies in the reason, maybe that’s a good thing. But it begs the further question of if the young Prince had anything to do with the “behavioral incidents” at the Phi Delt house and what exactly did Callahan do to “clean it up”?

• Has anyone tracked down Birzin, Callahan or Hart to get to the bottom of this?

(h/t to Eli and Marwan for digging up many of these links)

Internet connection is pretty slow where I am, but I thought I’d just hattip some of my colleagues’ blogs today:

Debbie Schlussel has an interesting piece about Israel striking an empty Hamas office. Debbie always has great insight into Israeli politics.

Althouse has a nice story comparing McCain and Obama’s (links to WashPo)

American Thinker on Obama’s interventionist theories.

Captain’s Quarters on an unexpected Bush supporter. I love the Captain.

McCain explains 100year linein Conservative Heritage Times

new on Mahmoud Abbas

Daniel Pipes on the Koran

LONG treatise on the peace process - you had me, then you lost me.

Updates on the campaign

Obama’s Old wine - I don’t buy this at all.

Navy Jihadist

Tribute to the great Buckley from LGF

Obama Pro-Palestinian

Criminal Negligence in Gaza - I disagree strongly with this

Smooth Stone story on Hamas

Michael’s on the road back, but wanted me to post some more links wrapping up Annapolis:

Carl in Israel has this disappointing, but perhaps not unexpected, news.

Links to: Debka - post Annapolis interviews.

Disapointment in Bush from the Right.

RedState Update analysis, likewise.

National Review…

Disappointment in Bush from the Left.

Disappointment…from the Vatican?

Disappointment…from Iowa?

And more disappointment from the Left