Posted by
J-GOP on Friday, November 21, 2008 12:01:03 PM
By Don Feder
Back in the 1980s, during the euphoria of the Reagan-era, Neo-cons like Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol predicted a seismic shift in Jewish voting patterns.
Once American Jews discovered that voting Republican was crucial for the survival of the Jewish state, they’d naturally align themselves with the party that actually believes in national security, we were assured.
It never happened.
After this year’s election – in which Barack Hussein Obama got 77% of the Jewish vote – we can confidently say it never will. Once again, in 2008, most American Jews voted their religion – liberalism.
Some minorities have a clearer perception of where their interests lie. According to the American Muslim Task Force for Civil Rights and Elections, nearly 90% of Muslims voted for Obama, only 2% for McCain – smart Muslims, dumb Jews.
If there was ever a year in which Jews should have been forced to reconsider their robotic loyalty to the Democratic Party, 2008 was it
The Democratic presidential candidate should have set off alarm bells in the head of the average Jewish voter – from his whack-job pastor’s anti-Israel ravings, to his multiple ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, to his Middle East donors, to his terrorist cheering section, to his refusal to condemn Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas – Jews should have broken out in a cold sweat at the thought of this ideologue directing U.S. military and foreign policy.
That they didn’t reflects the triumph of the heart over the head.
It’s not that Jewish voters were unaware of the reality of Barack. The Republican Jewish Coalition spent beaucoup bucks broadcasting the facts through e-mailings to Jewish voters and ads in Jewish periodicals. Jewish voters just didn’t care.
My friend Rabbi Aryeh Spero says roughly 40% of Jewish voters are intellectually tied to the left – marching in lockstep to the beat of MoveOn.org, the anti-war movement, George Soros, Barney Frank, etc.
Along with other dogmatic utopians, they actually believe that any enemies we have are of our own making, that America has generally been a force for oppression and exploitation in the world, that terrorism is born of poverty and despair (rather than a murderous fanaticism), that America must do perpetual penance for past mistakes, and that a Palestinian state will usher in the messianic age. I could go on, but it’s too depressing.
Another 25% Spero describes as “traditional, though not necessarily Orthodox. They take into account what’s best for America, Israel and Jewish survival.” They usually vote Republican.
The last 35% are not inveterate leftists. Intellectually, they may understand the dangers of voting for an Obama. But they are connected to the Democratic Party by an emotional umbilical cord. In the end, no matter how convincing the evidence or sound the reasoning, they’ll go with their hearts.
Hence, through a process of self-hypnosis, most Jews have programmed themselves to believe the impossible.
In the American Jewish Committee’s 2008 survey of Jewish Opinion (conducted September 8-21), by 53% to 36%, Jews said the Democratic Party is more likely to make the right decisions in dealing with terrorism than the GOP - doubtless on the principle that appeasement works.
By the same lopsided margin (52% to 32%), those surveyed said Democrats also were more likely to do the right thing when it comes to Israel. They probably reached that conclusion when Jimmy Carter pronounced Israel an apartheid state, and Nancy Pelosi crawled to Syria, wearing a headscarf.
That McCain had an unblemished, 20-year record of support for Israel, Obama is surrounded by advisors who are hostile to Israel, and Iranian Television described the latter as “highly educated” and “eloquent,” mattered not in the least.
The AJC survey highlighted another reality. Among American Jews generally, support for Israel is a low priority.
When asked: “Which one issue would you most like to hear the candidates for president discuss during the 2008 presidential campaign,” 54% said the economy, 11% picked health care and only 3% chose Israel.
To the question, “Would you support or oppose the United States taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons,” 47% of Jews said they’d oppose America moving to save Israel from nuclear annihilation, 42% would support it, and 11% were unsure.
This is perhaps the clearest indication that a significant segment of the Jewish community either doesn’t give a damn about Israel or is delusional.
Even though Iran is led by a raving anti-Semite and Holocaust-denier – who’s said Israel “should be wiped off the face of the Earth” – even though Iran was voted most likely to commit nuclear suicide if it could take Israel with it, a plurality of Jews still said they’d oppose U.S. military action to forestall a second Holocaust.
Hey, Pat Buchanan, most Jewish voters who’ve taken a stand on Iran agree with you! No wonder there were so many Buchanan votes in Palm Beach County in 2000.
On one crucial point, there must be no confusion: There’s nothing remotely Jewish about the Jewish vote.
As Jewish author Dennis Prager notes, if there was a connection between Judaism and liberalism, those Jews grounded in Torah and most committed to living a Jewish life, would be the most liberal. Democratic presidential candidates would carry Borough Park and Crown Heights in Brooklyn by a landslide every time, while Manhattan’s Upper West Side would be painted red.
The opposite is the case.
The AJC poll found that as Jewish observance went up, support for Obama went down. Obama had the support of just 13% of Orthodox Jews, compared to 59% of those affiliated with Conservative Judaism (which bears no relation to political conservatism) and 62% of Reform Jews. McCain got 78% of the Orthodox vote.
Exit polling showed that of those American Jews living in Israel (overwhelmingly Orthodox) who cast absentee ballots in the U.S. election, 76% voted for McCain.
The term Jewish vote is meaningless. It signifies nothing. Today, most Americans who call themselves Jews are ethnically or nostalgically Jewish. They may, occasionally, participate in Jewish rituals involving dreidels or bagels. They are not, however, Jewish in the sense that their grandparents or great-grandparents were – not even close.
In this regard, they are like so-called Catholic voters. For most, their Catholicism consists of being born into a Catholic family and attending mass on special occasions.
Their knowledge of Catholic dogma is nearly nonexistent. Most think the pronouncements of the Bishop of Rome quaint at best, but feel no obligation to follow his prescriptions.
Thus, 56% of “Catholic voters” cast their ballots in this election for the candidate who, as an Illinois legislator, voted for infanticide, and – in the past campaign – promised to allow the federal judiciary to impose gay marriage on the states, by repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.
How hopeless are Jewish voters? By a margin of 3-to-1, they voted for the man who:
Was the candidate of choice of terrorists and totalitarians. In April, Ahmed Yousef, a top Hamas political advisor, called Obama a “great man, with great principles” and “a vision to change.” The ruling regimes in Iran, Syria and Libya fairly salivated at the prospect of an Obama presidency.
Whose pastor and mentor of 19 years compared Zionism to “white racism,” accused Israel of imposing “injustice… and racism” on the Palestinians, and gave an award to Louis Farrakhan (who once called Judaism a “gutter religion”)
Who was endorsed by the most dangerous anti-Semite in America (Farrakhan) who called him the “hope of the entire world”
Who attended Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March, and later lauded the neo-Nuremberg rally as an event that brought African-American men together and showed they were ready “to make a commitment to bring about change in our communities and our lives”
Who sat on the board of the Woods Fund when it gave a total of $75,000 over two years to the rabidly anti-Israel Arab-American Action Network
Whose friend Rashid Khalidi, formerly a PLO spokesman, took over Columbia University’s Middle-East-studies program in 2003, which, according to the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, “he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism”
Whose first director of Muslim outreach, Mazen Ashabi, quit after the Wall Street Journal linked him to Jamal Said – fingered by the Justice Department as a Hamas fundraiser.
Who received over $29,000 in donations from Hamas-controlled Gaza
Whose election will herald a sharp decline in Zionist influence in Washington, the Rev. Jesse Jackson predicted
Who said the “legitimate claims” of Hezbollah are “weakened” by its violence
Who said the terrorist attacks of 9/11 grew out of “a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair” – to which we must not overreact
It’s interesting to speculate on why Republicans, in the face of bitter experience, determinedly pursue the Jewish vote.
Jews represent just 3% of the electorate – though they are more heavily concentrated in swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
But Republicans, many of them serious Christians, see themselves as the standard-bearers of our Judeo-Christian heritage. How does that work when the descendants of those who stood at Sinai reject them?
The answer: Those Jews also reject the Judeo-Christian ethic and the historic mission of the Jewish people – to repair the world under the rule of God.
The Republican Jewish Coalition should close its doors. Its budget, and anything else the GOP spends on wooing Jewish voters, should be equally divided between building more Orthodox Jewish day schools (thereby encouraging the Orthodox to have more children) and transporting evangelical Christians to the polls on Election Day.
That would do more to help Israel and to assure Jewish survival than the money wasted quadrennially on trying to bring a message of reason to the mega-meshugeneh.