| Visitors Now: | |
| Total Visits: | |
| Total Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Why Jews are Deserting Obama and the Democrats
Tuesday, August 24, 2010 17:17
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.
By Ed Lasky
One little-noticed trend that speaks volumes: the decline in Democratic Party identification and support for Barack Obama from American Jews, once among their most reliable and enthusiastic backers.
There has been a steady drip-drip-drip of Jews leaving the Democratic Party, most recently noted by the Pew Research Center. This has caused consternation among the usual suspects — among them, the National Jewish Democratic Council and New York Times columnist and uber-liberal Charles Blow, who commented just a few days ago:
There has been a steady drip-drip-drip of Jews leaving the Democratic Party, most recently noted by the Pew Research Center. This has caused consternation among the usual suspects — among them, the National Jewish Democratic Council and New York Times columnist and uber-liberal Charles Blow, who commented just a few days ago:
In a Pew Research Center report issued on Thursday and entitled "Growing Number of Americans Say Obama Is a Muslim" (tragic in its own right), there was another bit of bad news for Obama: the number of Jews who identify as Republican or as independents who lean Republican has increased by more than half since the year he was elected. At 33 percent it now stands at the highest level since the data have been kept. In 2008, the ratio of Democratic Jews to Republican Jews was far more than three to one. Now it's less than two to one.This is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel, while taking "special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world," as Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, put it in June. If that sounds like courtship, it is.
With all due respect to Mr. Blow, this shifting dynamic is a bit more complicated than blaming it all on Barack Obama's harsh treatment of Israel.
Blow's simplistic approach suggests the ugly issue of dual loyalty. Most Jews are not single-issue voters, and Israel is not the top concern of most Jews. This fact has not escaped the notice of pro-Israel groups in America, which are often at wit's end to generate pro-Israel feelings among American Jews. Yet Blow and others seem to want to focus on Israel. Hispanics aren't accused of putting their home countries above America when they march for immigration "reform"; Poles aren't criticized when they express pride in their homeland, and they were among the fiercest domestic foes of the Soviet Union (these include Zbigniew Brzezinski, who routinely all but charges Jews with dual loyalty but omits his own role in bringing the Taliban to power in Afghanistan as a way to weaken the Soviet Union to the point where it had to eventually stop occupying his homeland). The political correctness that is the guiding principle at the New York Times apparently does not extend to American Jews. Be that as it may, Jews are as American as everyone else and focus on domestic concerns when they vote. What they see happening under Democrat rule, they don't like.
