Today, at a luncheon at the National Press Club on the future of the Republican Party in Washington, FreedomWorks chairman and tea party strategist Dick Armey slammed former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and other anti-immigration activists for “alienating a ‘natural’ constituency [Latinos] that could help the party win elections.” Armey admitted that as House leader, he made sure Tancredo didn’t have a stage to speak on. The Daily Caller reports:

Former Republican House leader Dick Armey said staunch anti-immigration opponents such as Rep. Tom Tancredo are destructive to Republicans — and are alienating a “natural” constituency that could help the party win elections. “Who in the Republican Party was the genius that said that now that we have identified the fastest-growing voting demographic in America, let’s go out and alienate them?” Armey said, referencing Hispanics, during a luncheon in Washington at the National Press Club.

“When I was the majority leader, I saw to it that Tom Tancredo did not get on the stage because I saw how destructive he was,” Armey said of the Colorado congressman and 2008 Republican presidential candidate known for his opposition to illegal immigration. [...]

Armey also said “the Republican Party is the most naturally talented party at losing its natural constituents in the history of the world.” “This party was born with the emancipation proclamation and can’t get a black vote to save its life. How do they do that?”

Tancredo has long been a target of Armey’s criticism. In an interview with Charlie Rose that aired earlier this month, Armey went as far as to list former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) as representing part of the “tea party tent” that he feels “uncomfortable” with. In 2006, Armey referred to Tancredo as the “cheerleader of jerkiness in the immigration debate.”

Armey’s remarks have clearly made “nativist-extremist” groups that are trying to exploit the momentum of the tea party movement nervous. Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) quickly came to Tancredo’s defense and started urging its members to attack Armey’s immigration position and make their voices heard. According to ALIPAC, Armey has been fighting to “keep the illegal immigration issue out of the Tea Party movement.” On an organizing conference call hosted by NumbersUSA, callers dismissed Armey as not being a “true tea party patriot,” but also sought tips on how to translate their anti-immigrant views to fit the tea party narrative. “We’ll be a whole lot better off if when [sic] we talk about illegal immigrants we leave off the Hispanic-Latino stuff,” advised NumbersUSA executive director Roy Beck.

While Armey’s remarks might delegitimize nativist tea bagger-wannabes in the eyes of those who value his funding and leadership, he’s ultimately the one responsible for giving their voices a megaphone. Armey may have kicked Tancredo off the stage in the House, but now he’s built a platform that’s open to any wingnut who wants to capitalize off of the anger and frustration that the tea party movement encapsulates.

Finally, while critiquing the GOP, Armey himself falls into another trap of the Republican Party: failing to offer workable solutions on immigration. While Armey is quick to critique the federal government’s immigration agency, the only solution he has offered is to privatize the U.S. immigration system. Currently, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is the lone Republican working on comprehensive immigration reform. A second Republican co-sponsor is, so far, nowhere to be found.

Last week, the Israeli government announced that it had approved settlement expansion in East Jerusalem and the West Bank just as Vice President Biden arrived in the country to propel Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Biden quickly condemned the move, saying that “the substance and the timing” of the announcement “undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions.” Later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Israeli move “insulting” and “a very unfortunate and difficult moment.” Israel’s U.S. ambassador reportedly described U.S.-Israeli relations as in a state of “crisis.”

Now, conservative Israel supporters are pinning the blame on the Obama administration for the spat for daring to publicly air its differences with the Israeli government. Making reference to Clinton’s remarks, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who himself enjoys airing public disagreements with Obama, urged the White House to be quiet on Israel:

“It was a dust-up, a misunderstanding. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has apologized, and the timing was unfortunate. But the second round of criticism is unproductive. I make one appeal — sometimes silence really is golden.”

In a press release, the Israel lobby organization AIPAC offered similar remarks. “The Obama Administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern,” the statement read, adding that the “Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel.”

On Fox News Sunday yesterday, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol stated bluntly that the dust-up was all Obama’s fault. “This is a fight that the White House has picked,” he said. “I do not know, honestly, why the president chose to pick a big public fight just when it was all dying down with Israel.”

It’s unclear why critics believe the White House “picked” the fight considering that Israel agreed in November to to curb settlement growth in partial fulfillment of Israel’s obligations under the Bush administration road map.

The administration is speaking up in defense of U.S. interests in the region. CentCom commander Gen. David Petraeus said recently he “worries” about the “lack of progress in resolving the issue” for U.S. forces in the region and that he believes “that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region.”

The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz editorialized yesterday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s settlement policies are “leading to Israel’s increasing international isolation and threatening its key security interests in the name of an extreme right-wing ideology.”

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In the lead up to the Iraq war, neoconservatives were fond of suggesting that “the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad.” The idea, peddled by neoconservatives associated with the Project for The New American Century (PNAC), was that regime change in Iraq would transform the power dynamics in the Middle East in such a way that, among various other wonderful benefits, Israel would feel more secure:

“The road to Jerusalem,” the mantra went, led through Baghdad. Neoconservatives and other hawks within the Bush administration expected that the United States would win respect in the Arab world through a massive show of force, and that Israel would be more comfortable making peace with the Palestinians once Saddam was gone.

As Leon Hadar wrote in September, the notion “proved to be an illusion“:

Instead of strengthening the pro-American bloc in the Middle East, weakening the power of radical political Islam, and accelerating the peace process, the Bush administration’s policies helped tilt the regional balance of power toward Iran and its satellites, empowering anti-American and anti-Israeli forces in Lebanon and Palestine and generating mistrust and violence in the Holy Land.

Now the message emanating from Israel and some of its supporters in the United States is that the road to Jerusalem leads through Iran.

Right on time, here’s Jamie Fly of the Foreign Policy Initiative (which is essentially a rebranded PNAC) showing that neocon illusions never die, they just get repackaged for new wars:

There is indeed a linkage between all of these regional problems, but the Obama administration has the sequence reversed. Regime change in Iran, not continued pressure on Israel and the Palestinians, represents the best chance this administration has to remake the Middle East.

Iran does pose a serious problem for the U.S. — but I’m more inclined to go with General David Petraeus on this one, that better behavior by our client Israel and progress on the Israeli-Palestinian peace front would bolster U.S. credibility in region and help us more effectively confront Iran, among other challenges.

As for the various colorful ponies that Fly assures us will result from regime change this time, I would refer him to the Sage of Crawford: