April 23, 2024 10:53 AM UTC

Jerry Sonnenberg Finds His Voice After Boebert Votes Against Israel Aid

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

Over the weekend, the U.S. House passed three separate foreign aid bills appropriating billions of dollars to support allies in Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to allow votes on these three separate bills, each with its own bipartisan majority coalition available to pass, has outraged the hard right led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is busy today trying to amass support for her motion to vacate Johnson’s speakership.

During the vote Saturday, Colorado’s premiere self-appointed MAGA foreign policy expert Rep. Lauren Boebert shouted at Democrats for waving Ukrainian flags during the successful vote on that country’s aid bill. Although that outburst is what caught the attention of most press coverage this weekend, a bigger political problem in the long run may be Boebert’s vote against the standalone aid bill for Israel, in which Boebert was joined by a few other Freedom Caucus members and a number of lefty Democrats upset about the war in Gaza. Although we assume this vote was meant to protest Johnson allowing the foreign aid votes to be broken out into three individually passable bills with Democratic support, it also has put Boebert in the position of having joined with “The Squad” to oppose aid to Israel.

And that’s a big liability that Boebert’s CO-04 GOP primary opponent Jerry Sonnenberg drove the metaphorical bus over yesterday:

Lauren Boebert should be ashamed of herself for her repeated votes against our ally Israel. Even after Hamas terrorists brutally murdered innocent Israeli men, women, and children and continue to hold American hostages in Gaza, Lauren Boebert voted to deny Israel resources they need to win this fight. Even after Iran launched an unprecedented attack against Israel and continues to support proxy forces that seek to wipe Israel off the map, Lauren Boebert voted against critical assistance that would help protect our ally in the region. Even while the Jewish community faces relentless antisemitism around the world and right here in America, Lauren Boebert was presented with an opportunity to stand with Israel and the Jewish community and failed.

This is now the second time Lauren Boebert has voted against aid for Israel since the barbaric terrorist attacks of October 7. It again shows that she knows nothing about the district she wants to represent.

The good people of Colorado’s Fourth District stand with Israel – myself included. When I represented our district in the legislature for 16 years, I voted repeatedly to support Israel because it is the right thing to do and what people across our communities expect of their representatives. If Lauren Boebert doesn’t understand that, she has no business representing our district in Congress.

If I am honored to represent the Fourth District in Congress, I will always stand with Israel because our great district stands with Israel. Lauren Boebert cannot say the same, and she owes everyone an explanation.

This isn’t the first time that Boebert has had what you might call a semitically problematic moment. In 2022, Boebert questioned whether an Orthodox Jewish visitor to the Capitol was conducting “reconnaissance.” In 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Boebert referred to vaccination workers “Needle Nazis,” for which Boebert was condemned by the Auschwitz Memorial. Last year, after the White House announced a new initiative to combat antisemitism, Boebert attacked the effort as a way to “go after conservatives,” calling it “straight out of the USSR’s playbook.”

With Republicans from Denver to D.C. keen to exploit the slightest inference of antisemitism for political advantage against Democrats, Boebert’s vote against billions of dollars in funding for Israel is a huge contradiction that her primary opponents are absolutely right to call out. You can’t claim to “stand with Israel” while voting against funding that’s been on hold for months while the country prosecutes a full-scale war. It’s an issue that politicians on both sides and especially Republicans would never have used as a political football in previous years, showing a weakness in resolve that embolden’s Israel’s (and America’s) enemies.

For Jerry Sonnenberg, it’s a sign that after a slow start and a belated recognition of the threat posed by the carpetbagging Rep. Boebert, he’s over the target. This is a message that can, to the extent it’s able to spread, dislodge conservative support for Boebert. If standing with Israel is no longer a red line for American conservatives, there may be none left.