J Street Preview

There are a number of organizations on the left who are monitored heavily by the right wing, who are looking for any trace of wrongdoing, any distant links to criminal activity, or any quotes that go beyond previous positions in a potentially controversial way. The research is done by right wing bloggers, organizations and in some cases even congressional staffers.

The organizations that get the most scrutiny include the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), ACORN, sometimes the ACLU, and now J Street. That the right spends so much time on these organizations and rarely comes up with anything is notable.

J Street holds its first conference in a few days (Sunday-Wednesday in DC). While the organization is attacked relentlessly by conservatives like Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, it has stood its ground. It has had no major controversies, and the criticisms from the neocons and a few others have failed to go mainstream.

Rarely has a conference been so scrutinized. The opposition is researching the background of every listed participant in the conference. And you can be certain that the conference will have plenty of the opposition running around the halls looking for scoops. If they actually understood J Street, they'd know that they won't come up with what they're really looking for from any of the speakers, so they may well rely on conference participants to try to get the quotes they want. We'll see.

Meanwhile, Tzipi Livni has sent J Street her regards, somewhat of a rebuke to Likud.

Update: two artists who were scheduled to perform at the conference but were dropped by J Street after criticisms on the right wing blogs write about it here. It's a questionable strategic choice for J Street in part because once you let one domino fall then sometimes it gets harder to protect the rest. That said, I can see why they did it. Still, I think it sets a bad precedent.