Conservative radio talk-show host Michael Medved, attending the Orthodox Union’s West Coast Torah Convention in Beverly Hills, entitled “Should Torah Jews Vote Democratic or Republican?”, was asked a question by one conference attendee:

"What about a McCain-Lieberman ticket?"

Smiling slightly, Medved relented: “I don’t think it’s an unthinkable possibility, and it would be a very strong ticket.” Medved also noted, “and people would love a unity ticket that would put America’s interests first.”

As you know, Lieberman was an unabashed Democrat in 2000, when he was tapped by Al Gore to be his running mate. These two are so completely opposite in many of their views today that it's remarkable that they were even on the same page back then.

However, Lieberman’s vocal support for the Iraq war has put him at odds with many Democratic lawmakers and the party’s liberal base. Last year, in Connecticut’s Democratic senatorial primary, he was thrown under the Democratic bus by stalwarts such as Christopher Dodd and Bill Clinton, and lost to an anti-war challenger, businessman Ned Lamont, before coming back to win as a third-party candidate in the general election.

These days, he describes himself as an “Independent Democrat,” and caucuses with the Democrats, securing their control of the Senate. But most recently he endorsed a Republican senate collegue, John McCain for President. And when it comes to issues such as the Middle-East, the war in Iraq, and the world-wide war on terrorism, Lieberman is on the opposite side of the aisle from his former Democratic brethren, making him even more of an Independent.

So is a McCain-Lieberman ticket a good idea? Perhaps. As political pundits agree, in most elections 20% vote for the far left candidate, 20% vote for the far right candidate, making elections decided by the remaining 40% in the center. If that's the case this year, then a McCain-Lieberman ticket might be a very good idea.

The only question is, "What percent of the Jewish vote would this ticket get?" Since the Jewish vote is slowly growing more conservative since 25% of Jewish voters in 2004 went Republican (up from 11% in 1992), such a centrist ticket could quite possibly garner substantially more from both sides.

We'll have to see how well McCain does in Iowa and New Hampshire to find out the rest of the story.

Here is my pick for the most absurd quote from the mainstream, liberal media for 2007. This is courtesy of the Media Research Group's, The Best Notable Quotables of 2007: The 20th Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting (www.mrc.org):

"Al-Qaida really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than al-Qaida - worse for our society. It's as dangerous as the Klu Klux Klan ever was."

MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann in an interview with Playboy Magazine.

The prospects that vapid comments like this are going to get any better from the Left in 2008, especially in light of being an election year, is quite slim.

During the Christmas season, Jews should wish their fellow Christians a "Merry Christmas" instead of the more bland and generic "Happy Holidays. An article entitled, "A Plea for Merry Christmas", by Yaacov Ben Moshe really summarizes it very well:

I am a Jew. I grew up in an observant Jewish home in which we greeted Christmas with a mixture of fascination, respect and irritation. I've grownup, though, and I've grown into a new perspective on this whole matter question and, today, when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, I have a new response. It's really simple-

I stop what I am doing
I thank them very sincerely
I wish them a Merry Christmas in return.

Here's why: I have come to see quite clearly that even if there are politically correct, multi-cultural, morally relativistic, post modern progressive busybodies who would like us to believe that our Christian friends' and Neighbors' spontaneous Christmas wishes are somehow injurious to us and our culture, they are nothing of the kind. A sincere "Merry Christmas is better for you than the blandest, most guarded "Happy Holidays".

You see, the U.S. was founded by Christians. Not just any Christians. The early colonists were both devout and independent. They were fervent Protestants whose purpose in coming here was to leave the Kings, Priests, state religions and archaic laws of the old world behind. They came here to build a country where every man could read scripture for himself and be his own priest, where he could be free to elect political leadership that he could follow gladly. Ultimately, that enterprise gave rise to the constitution and form of government we have today. At two hundred years old it is still the one in the entire world that best honors the individual and guarantees his rights.

If we do anything this holiday season, we need to loosen up and get a perspective on this "Merry Christmas" thing. It is not the people who say "Merry Christmas" and mean it that we need to be discouraging in America at this time. It is the people who find something wrong and suspect in the energy, enthusiasm and good-will that animates that "Merry Christmas" that we need to discourage....

By saying "Merry Christmas" in public we are not agreeing that Jesus was the son of God, we are just acknowledging that some very good people believe it. When we say it, that does not constitute accepting Jesus as our personal savior; it does show his followers that we see them as fellow countrymen, friends and brothers-in-arms in the defense of the highest ideals of our civil society. What is the problem with that?

You can read the entire article by following this link.

According to an article in the Jewish Daily, The Forward, Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are the top two hopefuls among American Jewish voters that were recently polled in a survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee.

The poll, which surveyed 1,000 self-identified American Jews between November 6 and November 25, presents the Jewish community as being somewhat out of step with the broader American electorate. According to the survey results, Clinton garnered a “favorable” rating from 53% of all respondents. The senator’s onetime rival and fellow New Yorker, former Republican mayor Rudy Giuliani, was viewed favorably by 40% of the survey’s participants — a result far higher than the 15% who considered themselves members of the GOP, and slightly better than those posted overall by Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Among Jewish Democrats, Clinton won a favorable rating from 70%, compared with 48% for Edwards and 45% for Obama. In comparison, Clinton was rated as favorable by 68% of Democrats nationwide, versus 36% for Edwards and 54% for Obama, according to a poll released Tuesday by The New York Times and CBS News.

Giuliani scored a favorable rating from three-quarters of Jewish Republicans — a score that far exceeds the favorable rating he won from 41% of Republicans nationally in the Times/CBS poll. Given the high proportion of Democrats in the AJCommittee’s survey sample — 58% — Giuliani’s overall favorability rating of 40% suggests he could win votes from a significant number of Jewish voters should he advance to the general election.

Here's an important point: The former New York City mayor is estimated to have won at least two-thirds of the Jewish vote during his successful runs for office in 1993 and 1997 — far greater than the 19% and 24% captured nationwide by President Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Overall, the results show a clear advantage for Clinton and Giuliani among Jewish voters. At the same time, other candidates continue to draw from larger pools of currently undecided voters. For example, whereas less than 20% of Jewish Americans said they were currently unable to form an opinion about Clinton, slightly more than 35% have yet to make up their minds about Obama and Edwards.

 

Don't worry, be happy: If you're a Republican, those words should be easy to follow.

According to pollster Gallup, a recent report based on a roundup of their health polls over the past four years finds that Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to report having excellent mental health.

The survey found that 58 percent of Republicans polled reported having excellent mental health. Only 38 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Independents reported the same. The study concluded it was unclear why there was such a strong correlation, but the relationship between party affiliation and mental health was virtually constant even within categories of income, age, gender and other factors.

"The reason the relationship exists between being a Republican and more positive mental health is unknown, and one cannot say whether something about being a Republican causes a person to be more mentally healthy or whether something about being mentally healthy causes a person to choose to become a Republican," the study said.

The study speculated that the fact that Republicans have on average higher incomes than members of others parties could play a factor. But in the study, even Republicans making less than $50,000 a year reported having excellent health far more than Democrats earning the same.

The study was based on interviews with 4,014 American adults who were at least 18 years old, conducted from November 2004 through 2007. The margin of error was 2 percent.

According to blogsite, "Yid with Lid", Ehud Olmert's bending over backward rush to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinian's will result in a divided Jerusalem, making East Jerusalem forever unavailable to the Jewish people.

"If Olmert has its way and Jerusalem is Divided...you will never again be able to travel to the Jewish holy sites in Eastern Jerusalem, because the Arabs do not believe that there are any Jewish Holy Sites in east Jerusalem...or that any part of Jerusalem that was ever Jewish."

The post references an article that appeared in CAMERA (the Committee for Acuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), entitled, "Jerusalem: Arab Denial of Jewish Ties", where Arab's discount any historical Jewish connection to the land of Israel:

"In 2002, Sabri wrote a booklet, entitled Palestine – the Human Factor and the Land which was published in Egypt in August 2002. In it, he used as evidence the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"to support his allegation that the Jews have for centuries been secretly plotting to take over Palestine. He denied any Jewish historic connection and right to the land, labelling the Jewish Temple built by Solomon as "imaginary."

"Historian and former Arafat advisor Jarar al Qidwa makes similar assertions: Solomon’s Temple, I believe, was built by the Canaanites who were the neighbors of the Israelis, the Israelites... I want to state several words clearly: the Bible became an archival document, not representing what the Israelis and the first Jews were, but what they thought they were, what they imagined. The Temple is the fruit of their imagination. In any case, when our nation or our Canaanite forefathers came to Palestine, they built the Temple… a temple in Jerusalem... ...The issue of the temple is a Zionist innovation. No one said that the temple that was built in Jerusalem, neither the Canaanite nor Roman, no one said that it was in the place of the [Islamic] Al Haram."

Yid with Lid correlates these false Arab claims with a dark assessment of Jerusalem's future:

"If you read the entire CAMERA article it is obvious that not only do the Palestinians believe this rubbish but most of the Muslim world..and people believe that the PA will care for Jewish Holy Sites. Not in this reality. They destroy them the same way they destroyed Joseph's tomb. And Jews will never be allowed to visit them again...the same way we were not allowed to visit the Jordanian controlled sites before 1967. Ladies and Gentleman, THAT is the future of Jerusalem if Olmert gets his way. A Jerusalem without Jews and eventually without Christians either. A future where Jewish and Christian Holy Sites are destroyed."

Let's hope that for Jerusalem's sake, this latest attempt to broker peace with Palestinians fails just like the countless number of similar peace agreements over the past four decades. One can only look to how the Gaza Strip turned out to get an idea of what will happen to East Jerusalem if it is turned over to the Palestinians.

BTW- check out Yid with Lid's list of "Blogs Against Hillary" on the lower right of his blogsite.

According to an article posted on the Jewish Policy Center website, the head of Britain's MI5 intelligence agency has revealed that more than 2,000 people were involved in an "al-Qaeda brand" of terrorist activities inside the UK, thanks to a permissive preaching environment and lax laws. The question for the U.S. is could this be happening to mosques in this country, too?

The answer is yes, it's happening here, but to a lesser extent. According to one FBI agent interviewed in Ronald Kessler's new book The Terrorist Watch, about one in ten of the United States' 2,000 mosques are believed to preach hatred. That number was higher before 9/11, however, as radicals now seek to evade U.S. intelligence agencies.

But the problem extends beyond mosques. Islamic schools play a role, too. According to scholar Daniel Pipes, a Saudi textbook at the Islamic Saudi Academy of Alexandria, VA, teaches first graders that, "all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews [and] Christians," while books used by New York City's Muslims schools include, "sweeping condemnations of Jews and Christians."

A new report issued by the New York Police Department indicates that radical Islam continues to have an appeal among Manhattan's Muslims, often through "informal groups or clusters of young men…usually associated with a particular venue – community center, non-governmental organization, university group, housing project, café or even a particular mosque." NYPD also noted the, "growing trend of radicalization that has permeated some Muslim student associations (MSA's)."

This environment has undoubtedly impacted America's Muslims. According to a Pew Research Poll, roughly one-quarter of young Muslims (ages 18-29) in the United States believe that suicide bombing is justified under certain circumstances.

Could radical Islam in America grow to be as bad as it is in the UK? Unfortunately, the extent to which radical Islam has penetrated the United States is not known. The aforementioned reports, along with scores of others, provide only a thumbnail sketch of the problem.

For Jews in the U.S., we can only hope that moderate Muslims will do the right thing and report extremist activities, networks and institutions. Until they do so, the picture that we see of Muslim extremism in this country will remain unclear, requiring us all to be cautious of our fellow Muslim citizens.

 

One of the reasons that many Republican loyalists are falling out of favor with their party is the realization that leading political figures are doing and saying things that go seemingly go against the grain of long-held beliefs. For example:

President Bush fails to secure the Mexican border, and embraces a Democrat proposal that would grant illegal aliens "pseudo" amnesty status.

John McCain co-authors the McCain-Feingold Act with Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, enabling the 527 political designation and giving birth to far left political groups such as MoveOn.org.

Now Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, a person who has long been considered a rising star in the Republican party, has shown the Jewish community and supporters of the state of Israel that this admiration may have been a little premature.

An article from The Bulletin of Philadelphia, entitled, "JERUSALEM SYNDROME AND U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice", indicates that Rice now seems to have become emotionally aligned with the Palestinians in the Middle East. According to her remarks, the Palestinian experience in occupied Israeli lands is somehow analogous to her experiences  in the segregated South during the 1950s and 60s. The article states:

"For Dr. Rice the struggle of the Palestinians is analogous to that of the Afro-Americans for civil rights, and she identifies with the Palestinians. She recalled what it meant to travel in segregated buses as a little girl in Alabama. She also compared the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to the Rev. Martin Luther King, because, in her mind, both were committed to peace. Rice views Abbas as committed to the struggle for Palestinian independence and, like Martin Luther King, opposed to terror and violence."

While Condi may be a highly-intelligent and scholarly woman in the area of political science, she is sorely lacking on the subject of history. She wishes to remain ignorant of the fact that Palestinians have consistently rejected peace with Israel. The best example was the Intifada of 2000 which started after Israel offered the Palestinians 97% of their demands to hand over currently occupied lands.

This position also ignores the many suicide bombings, and blatant examples of anti-Semitism over the past years promoting the killing of innocent Israeli citizens. Funny, but I don't recall Martin Luther King ever advocating that blacks during the civil rights protests of the 1960s blow themselves up in the public square. Wasn't his message "Silent Disobedience"?

Her lack of historical awareness and perceptions that are based on a false and oversimplified analogy, prevent her from seeing the facts objectively and dealing fairly, which are the prerequisites for statesmanship and the position of U.S. Secretary of State.

Once again, Jewish Republicans must hang their heads in disbelief, shame, and embarrassment.

So you think you're in the minority as a Jewish Republican? It could be worse. You could be a Jew supporting Republican Presidential candidate, Ron Paul. Now that's a minority!

According to an article posted on JewishJournal.com entitled, "The few, the proud, the Jews for Ron Paul", the candidate commands a loyal, albeit small, Jewish following. This Jewish support has followed the same pattern as Paul's backing from other groups -- coming from out-of-the way places on the Internet and taking mainstream media and political organizations by surprise.

Among his followers are two distinct poltical groups: Jews for Ron Paul, and Zionists for Ron Paul -- Jewish supporters that believe that it would be best for Israel if the United States kept out of Jerusalem's affairs. They also believe that American aid to Israel is dangerous because it feeds the perception that Jews wield too much influence over U.S. foreign policy.

"Many of us believe the current relationship between the United States and Israel is a very unhealthy relationship, like that of a man and concubine, or a slave and master," said Yehuda HaKohen, an American immigrant to Israel and head of the group, Zionists for Ron Paul.

Ron Paul's views towards the state of Israel and the Middle East conflict show a similar disconnect from reality. "Our foreign military aid to Israel is actually more like corporate welfare to the U.S. military industrial complex, as Israel is forced to purchase only U.S. products with the assistance. We send almost twice as much aid to other countries in the Middle East, which only insures increased militarization and the drive toward war."

Ron Paul is an interesting example of political extremes. Even though he may represent one aspect of the far-right, It's not doubt that many of his views are similar to those of far-left candidate Dennis Kucinich. Both are in favor of bringing our troops home from Iraq and all foreign locations immediately. Ron Paul even complimented Dennis Kucinich in a recent interview on C-SPAN. You can watch his glowing remarks in a 9-minute YouTube video. (Just advance it to 7:45 to see this comment).

Talk show host Hugh Hewitt said it best, "Clearly Ron Paul is as mad as a hatter. Both he and Dennis Kucinich would make the perfect circus freak-show act". It just goes to show you that, like two opposite points on a circle, both the far-right and the far-left can get to the point where they meet each other on the far side of that circle.

A recent article on the Israeli newspaper website, Haaretz.com entitled, "Jewish Republicans as an oppressed minority", shows that the Left still doesn't understand the reality of Republican Jews. The author points out something that we have known for quite some time, namely that there's a sense of dissonance and even discomfort in the idea of the Jewish Republican.

The article points out an example of the rank anti-Semitism that many on the left (including Jewish Liberals) hold dear when they hear that there are Jews that choose to become Republicans:

"If you're a Jewish Republican, the level of stupidity is beyond belief," humorist Lewis Black, a Daily Show commentator, told the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. He was answering a question which itself betrayed no small animosity toward the Jew who votes R. The question was "A higher percentage of Jews are voting Republican. Do you think Jewish Republicans are visionaries or blind? t's like being a gay Republican or a black Republican," Black replied. "Do you need your money protected that badly?"

When a liberal equates Jewish Republican motivation to money, the comment doesn't register on the liberal media rictor scale. But if a Republican had said the same thing about a liberal Jew, there wouldn't have been enough newspaper print space or air time to adequately cover the story.

And of course, what good liberal writer can't dredge up the past with prior negative Republican comments about Jews:

"The most familiar of these, of course, is an observation by the first president Bush's secretary of state, James Baker,who was widely quoted as having told a colleague prior to the 1992 elections: "F--k the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway." But Baker's irritation with the Jews pales when compared to the level of grand old anti-Semitism revealed by Oval Office audio tapes of Richard Nixon."

While many liberals have to resort to digging up 20 year old examples of Republican Anti-Semitic statements, they seem to be blind, deaf, and dumb when it comes to current examples of anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli statements on the left. How about Jimmy Carter saying that Israel is an "apapartheid state"? Or the U.N.'s vote on Zionism being Racism? Or even Ward Churchill's comment on "Little Eichmanns" of 9-11? No, once again, those stories aren't on Brian Williams short list for the NBC Nightly News.

The article ends on a good note:

"Perhaps, in this era which enshrines bonfires of a range of vanities, we have left the underclass to sink in its morass of unsafe and unsupported public schools, its plagues of drugs and despair and darkness. Perhaps the Republican way has begun to suit us, after all."

Yes indeed. Maybe there's hope for Liberal Jews to finally see the light after all.

A blogsite called, "The Street Conservative", has issued a 42-page white paper entitled, "Rudy Giuliani: Life Long Liberal", which details the candidates position on a number of social issues during his term a New York mayor. In their words:

"Rudy’s own words, news reports and commentary from both the left and right are utilized to prove that contrary to what we’ve been hearing and reading, Rudy Giuliani is what he has always been — a liberal.  It is streetcornerconservative.com’s hope that after reviewing the subject matter in the white paper, conservatives will take stories of Giuliani’s Damascus Road-like conversion with a grain of salt."

The fact of the matter is that a number voter polls such as the recent Quinnipiac University Poll taken on Oct. 23-29, 2007, using 1,636 registered voters nationwide. (MoE ± 2.4.) shows Rudy either beating Hillary or coming to a statistical dead heat with her if the election were held today. While it's certainly early to be conducting such polls with the national election a year away, no other Republican candidate from the current field even comes close.

What this blogger hasn't factored in is that with Rudy as the Republican nominee, he will have a strong chance of taking the state of New York, and drawing more conservative and moderate Democrats (especially male voters) away from Hillary.

Remember 1980 and the Reagan Democrats? The same phenomena happened then when Democrats flocked to elect Ronald Reagan in the face of an out of control economy and the Iranian hostage crisis under Jimmy Carter. It's not out of the question that a good chunk of Democrats will do the same in 2008.

While most Repbulicans are certainly not happy with his stance on same-sex marriage and gun control, Republicans have to decide one of two strategies. To stick to your values and nominate a true 100% Conservative that will get slaughtered in the general election, or nominate someone that has an honest chance of beating Hillary Clinton.

Since I'm not in favor of a liberal leaning Supreme Court, I'll be "Rooting for Rudy", thank-you!

A column that recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal online entitled, "Saving Civilization from Itself", was written by Arthur Herman, the author of the book called "Churchill and the Jews". In the article, Herman discusses the high esteem that Winston Churchill felt for the Jewish people and his support for the homeland that would later be know as Israel. The article includes this passage:

"A student of history, Churchill came to feel that Judaism was the bedrock of traditional Western moral and political principles--and Churchill was of a generation that preferred to talk about principles instead of "values." For Europeans to turn against the Jew, he argued, was for them to strike at their own roots and reject an essential part of their civilization--"that corporate strength, that personal and special driving power" that Jews had brought for hundreds of years to Europe's arts, sciences and institutions."

You can read the rest of this article by following this link.

Based on data complied by the Republican Jewish Coalition, Rudy Giuliani is emerging as the leading Republican candidate among Jewish Republican fundraisers. The data was complied during the recent RJC candidates forum held in Washington, D.C in mid-October.

In an article published on UC DailyNews.com, and according to campaign contribution reports, Giuliani has raised $58,750 from the leaders of the nation’s foremost Republican Jewish organization, compared to $35,900 for McCain and $31,200 for Romney. No other GOP candidate has received financial contributions from RJC board members. Seventeen of the 60 board members gave Giuliani the maximum $4,600 donation allowed for the primary and general election.

Judging from the applause and interviews at the end of the daylong RJC forum, rank-and-file members of the group appeared to give Giuliani the edge. The applause was especially strong when Giuliani reminded Jewish donors of his proven ability to win over voters from both parties. 

One audience member, Jeremy Kohn, praised Giuliani for his role in returning a $10 million charitable donation to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. After touring Ground Zero shortly after the attacks, the prince drew Giuliani’s ire by saying that America’s support of the State of Israel led to the terrorist strikes. 

Is this an early sign that Giuliani has the best chance to capture the Republican party nomination? Quite possibly.

One reason that he has the best chance among all the current Republican field of candidates of beating Hillary Clinton is his track record as New York mayor and his ability to garner votes from moderate Democrats. If Giuliani can take New York state in the general election, (which is certainly NOT a lock for Hillary if he runs), then this scenario can certainly become a reality.

One can only hope.

If you've seen the awe-inspiring documentary "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West", then you've seen a brief glimpse of how state-sponsored television stations across the Middle East have been indoctrinating their viewers to their slanted, anti-semitic views of both the United States and Israel.

If you like Obsession, then you've got to become a regular viewer of MEMRITV.ORG, the Middle Eastern Media Research Institute TV monitoring project. The site provides daily media clips with some of the most virulent anti-semitic statements made by state officials, news commentaries, and media celebrities.

For example, some of the more eye-opening clips that were just posted include:

"Muslims Will Rule America and Britain, Jews Are a Virus Resembling AIDS."

"Tom and Jerry - A Jewish Conspiracy to Improve the Image of Mice, becauase Jews Were Termed "Dirty Mice" in Europe."

"Jews Use Drug Trafficking to Take Control of the World and Subjugate Other Nations"

I wonder if someone can get liberals like Paul Krugman from the NY Times to watch these and see if he wants to keep believing that "Islamo-fascism" is just a made up term by neo-cons. Oh yes, I forgot. That assumes that liberal Jews actually have an open mind!

One of the more interesting statements that is heard quite often from our liberal counterparts is the statement, "How can you be Republican and a Jew?". The statement not only assumes that ALL Jews should be Democrats as some form of birthright, but also that there can't be any possible benefit for Jews to be aligned with the Republican party.

Now a recent article posted on the American Thinker (AT) website entitled "Why I am a Jewish Conservative" provides some concrete reasons why it makes increasing sense for today's Jews to vote Republican. The article represents the full text of a speech that author Richard Baehr, AT's political director, gave to Congregation Rodfei Zedek in Chicago. One of the more interesting passages from this speech is the following:

"What is disturbing I think is that so many American Jews have been completely oblivious to the rank anti-Semitic undercurrent in the charge and the danger to American support for Israel that is tied to the effort to associate the neocons, meaning the Jews and Israel, with the Iraq war. The effort by anti-Iraq war critics on the left to tag Israel and its supposed agents (the neocons) with causing the war, has picked up steam recently with the publication of a new book by Professors John Mearsheimer  and Stephen Walt called The Israel Lobby. It was also seen in the vicious attacks on Senator Joe Lieberman last year when he ran for re-election and was rejected by his own party in the Democratic primary."

While liberal Jews strain to find examples that tie the Christian right to anti-semitism, the sad fact that they seem to remain blind to the bulk of anti-semitic and anti-Israeli statements coming from the far left not the far right. Statements from anti-war Democrats such as Jimmy Carter, Cindy Sheehan, Ward Churchill, Sheila Jackson-Lee, and Bill McDermott are shining examples of how far the Democratic party has changed in the past 40 years in their willingness to blame Israel for the problems in the Middle East.

The "rank anti-semitism" of the war-critical left which Richard Baehr points to is one of the reasons why the percentage of Jewish voters that vote Republican in national elections has been steadily rising each election season. According to statistics complied by the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Jews that voted Republican in a Presidential election have been steadily increasing from 11 percent in 1992 to 19 percent in 2000 and to 25 percent in 2004.

Given these trends it's highly likely that we'll see a healthy increase in the Jewish Republican vote for 2008.