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April 23, 2024 10:53 AM UTC

Jerry Sonnenberg Finds His Voice After Boebert Votes Against Israel Aid

  • 11 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R).

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.

Former Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg (R).

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.

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11 thoughts on “Jerry Sonnenberg Finds His Voice After Boebert Votes Against Israel Aid”

  1. Too little, too late. He doesn't have the money to combat the AM radio MAGAts blaring from four out of five pickup in thee 4th CD. MAGAt world is fully behind Boobert. I wish it weren't so but money talks.

      1. I used that phrase almost word-for-word yesterday.  She wanders the Outback in her Stilettos, form-fitting denim jeans, teacher glasses, augmented headlamps and flaming red lipstick and they just can’t help but wonder when it’s going to be their turn. It’s in the back of everyone’s mind at every gathering; their respective lady counterparts are wondering why she isn’t taking care of business at home.  

        Nine of the top ten CO ag counties are in CD-4. We need someone who understands the dynamics of that landscape; serving tainted pork sliders does not a resume build. Nor does someone who villifies immigrants and would rather use immigration as a grievance than a solution. (CD-4 would collapse without immigrant labor). Nor does it need someone hostile to green energy; there have been billions invested and will be more to come. In some counties wind is the largest taxpayer.

        Thankfully we have Michael Bennet on the Senate Ag Committee to foster good policy for the region. 

        Jerry is very popular in Yuma County (#2 ag producing county in the state)  but Yuma County votes won’t matter much (2,962 registered Republicans) in the primary round. 

  2. Well I thought standing against Russian agression was a red line for American conservatives but evidently that one doesn't matter anymore either. "Lets talk about the future now we've put the past away."

    1. I hesitate to try to discern what goes through the heads of "conservatives" today. (Sorry, CHB, but they have hijacked your label.)

      What I suspect is the difference they would make about beating their chests and standing up to Russia (more accurately, the USSR) in the 1970's and 1980's, and their current ass-kissing of Vladimir Putin is that the USSR was the Godless, atheistic, freedom-hating Communist state hell bent on destroying our way of life whereas Putin is a patriotic nationalist who loves Mother Russia, Jesus, Sharlotka (Russian apple pie), free-market economics and the flag while hating foreigners, homosexuals, intellectuals, foreign homosexuals who are intellectuals, and anyone else his moronic base hates.

       

      1. Which entirely ignores who Putin is.  Ex-KGB, he would love to restore the USSR.  In his own image of course.  Kinda like they guy sitting in a NYC courtroom

        2. I’m not certain Putin wants a USSR … what I’ve read is he is trying for the idealized “Mother Russia” where all the good White people are in charge and all the nations around them had to listen to them. The Atlantic Council has an article about Putin’s chat with Tucker Carlson:

          In theory, at least, the same bogus historical arguments that have been used to justify the invasion of Ukraine could easily be applied to other parts of the former Soviet Union, or to the Russian Empire of the Czarist era. This would create an array of possible targets for Russian aggression including Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Alaska, and the whole of Central Asia. A maximalist interpretation could even see all of Central Europe’s former Soviet satellite states besides Poland added to the list.

          The far Northeast (Siberia), the region next to North Korea, the “‘…stans” and their Islamic populations — Putin seems less interested in annexing them, more willing to simply have them as convenient and acquiescent satrapies.

  3. Sonnenberg has an opportunity to go after Boebert's votes in a significant way. 

    Not just foreign aid to Israel. Or foreign aid to Ukraine. Or defense spending for the Western Pacific. 

    He could stress Boebert's voting

    • Against border security.
    • Against "Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act."
    • Against money to "states to support dental health workforce activities in areas that face a shortage of dental health providers"
    • There are a variety of other bills that she was for before voting against the bill.  For example, "Boebert is one of 40 Republicans who obtained earmarks in the federal spending bill, designating money for local projects, then voted against it."

    I may be a bit of a Pollyanna on this, but my sense is there is a significant reserve of voter mistrust of people saying one thing and doing something else, taking credit for things they had no part in, or clinging to an idealistic position rather than settling for a compromise.

    1. I would love it if you were correct, but the MAGAt mind (such that it is) doesn't think that way. Boobert will win the MAGAt vote. In a crowded primary that's all she needs.

      Besides, Sonnenberg doesn't have the money to get his pitch out.

  4. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what counts as leadership in her MAGA universe (she remains silent on the presence of Confederate flags in the Capitol on J6)

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