Posted on 07/25/2002 5:27:33 PM PDT by RCW2001
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| JULY 26, 2002 | | current issue | back issues | subscribe | |
Us and Dems: Jews Still Not Voting GOP
By IRA FORMAN"It seems clear that, come November 7, hundreds upon thousands of Jews will be violating the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not vote Republican."
"There is an evolution away from the [notion] that it's immoral to vote conservative, or that you must as a Jew vote Democratic."
"Jewish voters... are finding the Republican Party increasingly attractive."
The above declarations could have been lifted from any one of scores of op-eds, news articles or analysis pieces that have appeared in the national media over the last two months. But they were not. They are quotes from conservative spokesmen, pulled from stories published during the last three decades in such periodicals as the National Journal and The New York Times.
But despite these 30 years of prediction of a Republican realignment in the Jewish community, the last ten years have witnessed a resurgence of Jewish support for Democratic candidates. According to the one definitive survey of American Jewish voting, the VNS exit poll data from the 1972-2002 elections, Jews have gone from voting 2-1 Democratic in the 1970s and 1980s to 3-1 or 4-1 in the 1990s and the 2000 election.
From this data, one might assume that this phenomenon — ongoing false predictions of Jewish Republican voting — is more a reflection of the wishful thinking of Republican Jews who have been wandering in the political wilderness for 80 years than of any real sustained voting patterns.
The first clue to this wishful thinking is the changing reasons given over time for the impending shift in voting patterns. In the past we were told that Jews were becoming Republicans because they were becoming the wealthiest subsection of American society and thus were beginning to vote their pocketbooks. Later, when the rise of incomes did not induce rising Republicanism, we were told that Jews would switch to the GOP because of increasing antagonism between the community and African American Democratic politicians like Jesse Jackson. Now we are asked to believe that the reason for the "coming" change in allegiance is because Republicans and the Christian right love Israel and Democrats don't.
A second manifestation of this wishful thinking is a willingness to distort reality and engage in blatant double standards. An example of this new type of "analysis" that purports to find reasons for Jews becoming Republicans was a column published in The New York Times in April of this year titled "Democrats v. Israel." In this "analysis," Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle was charged with sabotaging pro-Israel legislation. Not only was the charge completely false, but Daschle was the one who broke the logjam blocking the "Israel Solidarity" legislation that passed both the House and Senate in May.
Moreover, many of the conservative analysts who derided former Democratic president Bill Clinton for policies such as refusing to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem or for trying to forge a peace agreement at Camp David in 2000 are the same folks who are strangely silent as Republican President Bush continues the Clinton policy on the embassy move and as his administration takes up the banner of creating "Palestine" as part of their own sponsorship of a peace process.
Finally, these analysts are unmasked by their creative use of voting statistics. Rather than rely on the one universally accepted set of Jewish voting data — the VNS exit polls — these folks fall back on fatally flawed partisan research, using studies with sample sizes that are so small that they are meaningless, or citing mayoral election statistics to prove changing partisan proclivities. The latter method is particularly misleading. Even in earlier decades when Jews were voting 90% Democratic in congressional and presidential elections, they continued to sometimes vote for Republican candidates for city offices — the same pattern we are seeing today. Local issues, not partisan affiliations, drive municipal elections.
When all is said and done these Republican Jewish predictions are wrong because they avoid examining the basic structure of American politics. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Republican Party draws the base of its support from the religious right. Thus 90% of the agenda of the GOP is diametrically opposed to the agenda of 90% of American Jewry.
As long as the Tom DeLays of the Republican Party accompany their support for Israel with the advice that "Christianity offers the only viable, reasonable, definitive answer" to life's questions, American Jews will find a viable, reasonable and definitive rationale to vote for pro-Israel Democratic alternatives.
Ira Forman is executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council and co-editor of the "Jews In American Politics" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
I would hope they would vote for pro American legislators.
But then again there is a difference between being an American and just being a US citizen. - Tom
Heh heh heh. They are gonna get a big surprise in 2004.
Just remember Jewish Democrats, Conservatives are the only ones who stand with you on principle and many of us identify with you because of your religious beliefs..
While you are just another minority vote to the Democrats. The minute the Muslims become more valuable a demographic to them, then you can kiss their support goodbye. They are fair weather friends at best.
And now Jews are voting GOP and you support Cynthia McKinney. Who'd have thunk it? :)
"There are a lot more Jewish Republicans than people think there are, even in the voting numbers," Bialosky said.
Luntz Research, a Republican-oriented polling company, found a reexamination of Bush and the Republican Party among Jewish voters since the 2000 election. The survey, released Dec. 3, found that 48 percent would consider voting for Bush in 2004. Only 23 percent of those surveyed had voted for him in 2000.
Among Jewish collegians, that number may be even higher.
"At least 50 percent of Jews under the age of 30 voted for George W. Bush in the last election," said Bialosky, referring to results from a Zogby poll following the 2000 election. With an increase in anti-Israel rallies and protests on colleges campuses, RJCLA is recognizing the need to play a greater role supporting Jewish students.
"Our goal is to have a Jewish Republican chapter in each of the major universities here in Los Angeles. The key to the future of this organization is going to be the younger people," Gluck said.
Orthodox Jews constitute another bloc of interest to RJCLA. The organization, which has a number of members who attend Beth Jacob in Beverly Hills, recently held a few meetings with the observant community. "They told us that the ones who aren’t Republican already just haven’t reregistered," Bialosky said."
So if I said that "I will not vote democrat because of Jews in the party, and there narrow ideas of things.... would that not be considered anti-semetic?
What happened to real issues?
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