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We're going to see more of this shameless pandering for the Jewish vote next year. Or more accurately stated, the use of Middle East unrest and the continuing Israel-Palestinian problem by politicians to further their own ends. Nothing new in that either. But few are going to go as far as Michele Bachmann in declaring that the fall of Arab dictators is a bad thing and not in the interests of either the United States or Israel.

From the National Journal.

LOS ANGELES – Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann on Friday decried the “Arab Spring” that has toppled three dictators and given rise to pro-democracy protests across the Middle East for promoting the “rise of radical elements” across the region.

In a speech to about 400 Republicans gathered for the state party’s fall convention here, the three-term Minnesota congresswoman blamed President Obama for “the hostilities of the Arab spring” and expressed regret that “we saw (Egyptian) President (Hosni) Mubarak fall while President Obama sat on his hands.”

She got her biggest applause line of the evening when she accused Obama of asking Israel to return to its “indefensible” pre-1967 borders. Obama in May said a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians should be based on the borders -- with land swaps --before the Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and its Arab neighbors, a position that angered some in Israel and Israel's conservative supporters in the U.S.

Popular uprisings have forced the ouster this year of longtime strongmen who ruled Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, but some conservatives are worried that the movement has cost the U.S. key allies in the region and is in danger of being hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists hostile to American interests.

Republicans suddenly see an opportunity to make inroads among Jewish voters, long a core Democratic constituency: Earlier this week, voters in a New York City congressional district that includes one of the heaviest concentrations of Jews in the country gave an upset victory in a special congressional election to a Republican candidate who made an issue of Obama’s Israel policy.

Gigi Ibrahim as featured on PBS's Frontline.

(PBS Frontline) Her family is part of the Egyptian elite, but 24-year-old Gigi Ibrahim says she's fighting for her country's future. With thousands following her Twitter feed, Gigi has become something of a celebrity in Cairo's Tahrir Square. In this video, we see her attempts to convince her family of the righteousness of her cause. But will they come around?

Frontline airs their special "Revolution in Cairo" on Tuesday night (Feb 22).

Gigi Ibrahim and other Egyptian youth are on this week's Time magazine cover. Her twitter account is @GSquare86.

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President Barack Obama should have known Egypt was going to have a revolution, according to the ranking member of the Armed Services committee.

Sen. John McCain told CBS's Bob Schieffer Sunday that the Obama administration didn't do enough to support democracy in Egypt as protesters in the country were calling for President Hosni Mubarak to step down.

"We should have seen this coming when the Egyptian government failed to move forward with a process of democratization," McCain began. "The last election was particularly flawed."

"So a lot of this should have been seen. This administration and the liberal left in America viewed Bush's democracy efforts as a way or an excuse to go to war. When president Obama refused to support the people in the streets of Tehran when a young woman bled to death -- named Neda -- before it was a seen by the world and this administration did nothing. That sent a very bad signal to all of these dictatorships."

"What should we have done?" Schieffer asked. "You're not saying we should have gone to war."

"No but we should have spoken up for them just as Ronald Reagan spoke up for the people behind the Iron Curtain, just as throughout our history we have had a fundamental belief and commitment that all of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights," McCain replied.

"I think the president has handled this situation well," he added, seemingly contradicting his earlier statements.

"I think that we need to get a transition that really understands that elections are not the answer. We've had election after election in places that have been meaningless. It is the apparatus. It is the modalities. It is the education of voters. It's all of the things that go to a free and fair election."

The senior senator from Arizona also said that while he had concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood filling the power vacuum in Egypt, the US should be careful to assist the Egyptian people instead of dictating to them.

On a radio show Friday, Schieffer admitted that CBS had bumped Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from the show to allow McCain to sound off on Obama's handling of Egypt.

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While continuing to parade one neo-con after another on Fox for their opinions on the revolution in Egypt, The Journal Editorial Review's Paul Gigot asks Paul Wolfowitz about the Muslim Brotherhood's potential participation in the transitional government now that Mubarack has left office. Wolfowitz actually says something I agree with. Heaven forbid any of them will ever apply it to the theo-cons here in the United States.

GIGOT: Alright, briefly, very briefly Paul, should the Muslim Brotherhood participate in this transition?

WOLFOWITZ: I could offer you an opinion, but I really hesitate to do so because I think Egyptians have to decide that. And I hope that they will think about as they make those decisions whether a legitimate political party, a party, a political party can be considered legitimate if for example they don't concede equal rights to women.

GIGOT: Alright.

WOLFOWITZ: There are standards. There should be Egyptian standards.

Yeah Wolfowitz, there ought to be standards on whether we should be invading other countries that are not a threat to us as well, but that doesn't stop Fox from thinking you've got anything legitimate to say about what happens in Egypt.

A music video made by Egyptian musicians with the revolution as their backdrop, sung in Arabic it's been viewed over 100,000 times since it was upped to YouTube yesterday. A people that can be make such upbeat pop songs in the midst of brutal repression were never going to lose to a mere dictator.

via WNYC Radio:

During a special Brian Lehrer Show in WNYC's Greene Space, journalist and activist Mona Eltahawy reacts to the breaking news that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned. This video is from minutes after the announcement.

Here is the entire crowd reaction as the news ripples through the enormous crowd at Tahrir Square. Live and uninterrupted.

Rabab Al Mahdi gives her personal reaction moments after Mubarak lets go of Egypt. Al Mahdi is a professor of political science at the American University in Cairo.

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Ed Schultz talked to The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel last night about the uprisings in Egypt and across the Middle East and the need for the United States to redefine our national security policies in the region. When Ed asked her about the many on the right who have been supportive of Mubarak and whether their labor's role in the movement might have had anything to do with it. Vanden Heuvel reminded him that neocons have never had much use for real democracy, whether it be at home or abroad.

SCHULTZ: How is in your opinion the president and his advisers and the State Department handling all of this now that we go to day number 18 and mixed signals from the president and really demeaning talk coming from the vice president telling these protesters to go home but—oh, by the way don‘t watch television. What do you make of all of this?

VANDEN HEUVEL: You know, I think we all need to step back a little and speak with some humility.

Egyptians are putting their lives on the line. Hundreds of thousands came out yesterday as you reported, Ed, across the country—labor, doctors, lawyers, across class, gender, religious lines. I think it is the Egyptians to sort out, and they will. They have shown the world, they have shown us what a democracy movement looks like.

I believe that behind the scenes, because this country has over invested in, quote, “stability,” propping up dictators, intelligence, security, military apparatuses that we have to be using our leverage, that $1.5 billion a year we give the Egyptian military, to make sure that there is some process, some outcome that will resolve in a more democratic country.

But as you pointed out, Ed, earlier, you know, the labor movement, others in Egypt, have been working toward this moment for years. And it is those people who in this country, human rights organizers and independent trade union organizers, were the ones who put a check on the repression, not our government.

So, I hope that this is a moment to redefine U.S. national security thinking in this region. It is a beginning. It is a process just as democracy is a process.

But we must begin to disinvest from security intelligence apparatuses which don‘t make us secure and reinvest in civic governance, and in economic development which Egypt as it emerges from this extraordinary moment will need desperately.

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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned Friday, according to Vice President Omar Suleiman.

"My fellow citizens, at these hard circumstances our country is experiencing, President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has decided to waive the office of the president of the republic, and instructed the supreme council of the armed forces to run the affairs of the country," the vice president said on Egyptian state TV.

"May God guide our steps," he added.

Mubarak had reportedly retreated to the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh

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Two sources told NBC News that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would step down Thursday.

"Word of this information is just now spreading out in Cairo," NBC's Richard Engle reported Thursday. "We again, once again, have been told by two sources within the presidency that President Mubarak will step down."

"The prime minister's office is telling us that President Mubarak tonight will decide," he added.

For its part, Al Jazeera English continued to treat the news as a rumor.

Mubarak was expected to address the nation Thursday night.

US CIA chief Leon Panetta said Thursday that he expected the Egyptian president to cede power "today."

Al Jazeera also reported Thursday that Egyptian Army officials said that protesters' "demands will be met."

The supreme council of the Egyptian army met Thursday to discuss its position on the protests and Mubarak's future.

Protesters have been massing on the streets of Cairo and other cities in Egypt since Jan. 25, demanding Mubarak leave office. The size of the demonstrations have grown in past days.

Protesters called for 20 million to march throughout the country on Friday.