Perspective of a Rabbi
Please take a moment to digest this provocative article by a Jewish
Rabbi from Teaneck, N.J. It is far and away the most succinct and
thoughtful explanation of how our nation is changing. The article
appeared in The Israel National News, and is directed to Jewish
readership. 70% of American Jews vote as Democrats. The Rabbi
has some interesting comments in that regard.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation
Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey.
The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is
that Americans voted for the status quo “ for the incumbent President
and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship,
incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility.
And fewer people voted.
But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the
facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the
chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of
Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because
he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans
could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama
benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.
Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes to win.
That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost
because the conservative virtues the traditional American virtues of
liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and
aspirations to moral greatness “ no longer inspire or animate a
majority of the electorate.
The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible
to compete against free stuff.
Every businessman knows this; that is why the loss leader or the
giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one
in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on
food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they
did, by the tens of millions; those who courtesy of Obama receive two
full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes
looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while
collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote. The lure of free
stuff is irresistible.
The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation of the
secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of
winning an election in which 47% of the people start off against him because
they pay no taxes and just receive money free stuff from the government.
Almost half of the population has no skin in the game they don’t care about
high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money
for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese.
They just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense.
In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and
does not bode well for the future.
It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against
such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the
people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President
who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.
That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable
conclusion that the electorate is ignorant and uninformed. Indeed, it does
not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters the clear
majority are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism.
That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts
and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term
agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt
Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when
he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor
and cutting taxes for the rich.
During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai
Stevenson: Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!
Stevenson called back: That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!
Truer words were never spoken.
Obama could get away with saying that Romney wants the rich to
play by a different set of rules without ever defining what those
different rules were; with saying that the rich should pay their fair
share without ever defining what a fair share is; with saying
that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to Å“fend for themselves
without even acknowledging that all these government programs are
going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending.
Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a
Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women
that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal
to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to
Mexico and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws.
He could espouse the furtherance of incestuous relationship between
governments and unions in which
politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which
the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which
the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc.,
even though the money is gone.
Obama also knows that the electorate has changed that whites will
soon be a minority in America (they’re already a minority in
California) and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from
the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that
attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different
world, and a different America. Obama is part of that different
America, knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.
Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective
sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged
in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his negative
ads were simple facts, never personal abuse facts about high unemployment,
lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack
of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not
embrace the devil’s bargain of making unsustainable promises.
It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan people of
substance, depth and ideas to compete with the shallow populism and
platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy of
class warfare never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual
groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups.
If an Obama could not be defeated with his record and his vision of America,
in which free stuff seduces voters it is hard to envision any change in the future.
The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy those
very economies that are collapsing today in Europe is paved.
For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results
demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a
president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile
to Israel. They voted to secure Obama’s future at America’s expense and at
Israels expense in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin.
A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable
that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart
any Israeli initiative. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until
the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon and then state that the world
must learn to live with this new reality.
But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire,
nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The American
empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the
last five years. This election only hastens that decline. Society is permeated with sloth,
greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations.
The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come.
The Occupy riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals
for what lies ahead years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the
unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not
appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.
If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone.
And, sad for the world, it is not coming back.