Aaron David Miller doesn’t expect anything in the U.S.-Israel relationship to change on account of the Netanyahu speech controversy:

Whether Netanyahu ultimately does come or not, the United States will continue to take it. And for reasons of politics, policy and shared values, Washington will continue to accord Israel tremendous leeway in this Administration and in the years ahead regardless of opposition to some of its policies.

I suspect Miller is right about the lack of serious consequences for the relationship, but he reaches this conclusion by getting many other things wrong. The short version of Miller’s argument is this: the region is more unstable now than in it has been in a long time, the U.S. benefits from its current relationship with a relatively stable Israel, the U.S. can’t address regional problems without Israeli cooperation, “pro-Israel” groups in the U.S. continue to wield considerable influence, and Obama won’t be in office for that much longer. The first of these claims may be true, but it’s not really relevant because the second and third claims are pretty clearly false. The U.S. doesn’t get very much at all from its relationship with Israel regardless of how stable or unstable the region is, and the U.S. has so far successfully pursued its current negotiations with Iran in spite of overt Israeli opposition. Their acquiescence to U.S. policy might be desirable, but it isn’t necessary.

Even so, there probably won’t be much fallout from Netanyahu’s visit in Congress because almost all members of Congress currently see no incentive in being more critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship. The influence of “pro-Israel” groups is one very important reason for that, but no less important is the absence of any influential political organizations that favor a more balanced and normal relationship between the two countries. It’s not that there is such broad and overwhelming public support for the current relationship. There isn’t. Most Americans don’t favor the one-sided sort of relationship that exists. The problem is that this majority is not well-organized and lacks representation in large numbers in Washington, and until that changes there is little chance that there will be a significant challenge to the status quo.