My column today (coming soon) is about how the Republican presidential candidates are being forced to prove over and over again that they're "real" conservatives, a task made more difficult by the ever-increasing number of positions they have to hold to avoid getting pulled over by the identity border patrol. Some of these positions are relatively new, which means that some candidates aren't going to be up on all the nuances. Erstwhile pizza executive and radio host Herman Cain, for one, recently ran into some trouble when he got asked about the Palestinians' "right of return." Cain didn't seem to know what the term meant. Then, when it was explained to him, he said about the Israeli government, "I don't think they have a big problem with people returning." Of course, they have an extremely big problem with it, namely that granting such a right would allow Palestinians to quickly become a majority of the Israeli population.
Plainly, Cain knew that his stance on Israel was supposed to be essentially Likudnik, with the important addendum that anything Barack Obama says or does about Israel is wrong. What he didn't know was that he had to do some studying to be up on the details. But it's worth remembering that not too long ago, before Sarah Palin put an Israeli flag up in her office, Israel wasn't something conservatives cared all that much about. It's only in the last few years, particularly once the war on, ahem, "terror" started, that Republican politicians adopted Israel as a conservative identity issue, started making trips there (with the obligatory pilgrimage to Sderot), and generally acted as though the only appropriate position for a conservative to hold is that that Palestinians have almost no legitimate claims whatsoever, the Israeli government is without sin, and settlements should be expanded indefinitely. What's more, not holding those positions, and feeling them deep within the core of your being, would mean you aren't a real conservative.
Despite its recent vintage, this position has become nonnegotiable within the GOP. Cain actually did the other candidates a service by displaying some momentary ignorance. You can bet each of them just got a memo from his or her policy director saying, "Just to make sure you're up on the Israel-Palestinian issue, here are some important facts..." Because there are more pop quizzes to come.
