The Jewish Vote: More Republican Than You Think?
The American Thinker:
Almost within hours of the release on Wednesday morning of summaries of the national exit polls, conducted with voters across the county on Election Day, I received several gloating emails from liberal Jewish acquaintances, pointing to one specific result within the exit poll data: namely how Jewish voters within the national sample, had voted in the races for the U.S. House of Representatives. That sub-sample of just over 200 people who self-identified as Jewish voters (about 2% of the total survey sample), reported that they had voted 87% for Democrats 12% for Republicans.
In the 2004 Presidential election, several surveys of Jewish voters indicated that approximately 25% of Jews had voted for President Bush. The e-mailers this week argued that Jews had come home to their natural base within the Democratic Party, and that an ad campaign run by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) to alert Jewish voters to diminished support for Israel among leading Democrats and major figures on the left (e.g Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, John Conyers), had failed.
The 87% figure was quickly incorporated as gospel in articles on the election in the New York Times and many Jewish publications, as if this survey of 200-plus Jewish voters were in fact a reliable indicator of Jewish voting patterns in the recent election. One of the clarion calls lauding the survey results came from the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), a rival to the RJC. Interestingly, the NJDC had condemned as unreliable a survey of Jewish voters from the 2002 election which showed increased support for Jews among Republicans, because of the small sample size: 253 in that case.
But 200 Jewish voters was plenty enough for the NJDC this time. It is not clear if hypocrisy or ignorance is the appropriate way to classify these remarkably inconsistent reactions to the two surveys by the NJDC.
If Jewish voters vote consistently and predominately for democrats why is it that AIPAC is so successful in advocating with both democrats and republicans?
Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan are “major figures on the left”???
gili — because aipac’s job is to protect israel’s interests no matter who’s in power. that means talking the talk whether you’re dealing with dems or repubs. you have to convince both of them, in their language and on their terms, that what israel believes to be in its best interest is also in america’s best interest.
So the key to impacting policy is to have a smart, persuasive lobby as opposed to voting?
who controls congress — the voters, or the lobbies? why do you think the establishment is at war with moveon?
Re: “In the 2004 Presidential election, several surveys of Jewish voters indicated that approximately 25% of Jews had voted for President Bush.” I voted for Bush and worked for John Kerry’s defeat because of Kerry’s connections to:
(1) MoveOn.org
(2) George Soros (calls the U.S. a danger to world peace and says Israel causes anti-Semitism)
(3) Michael Moore (a terrorist sympathizer who calls the terrorists who are murdering our soldiers “Minutemen”)
(4) Al Sharpton (a well-known racist and anti-Semite who played a role in provoking two anti-Semitic pogroms in New York City) (A friend of MoveOn’s buddy Ned Lamont too)
(5) John Kerry, a self-confessed war criminal whose lies probably got thousands of men killed in Vietnam. Remember that people like John McCain were being tortured for refusing to say what John Kerry gave the enemy for free.
If the Democrats put up a MoveOn-er in 2008, I guarantee that I will back the Republican even if it is a garden vegetable, or a clone of George W. Bush. On the other hand, I can also tell you that I was at two Democratic election night parties last Tuesday, because that is who I was backing for State offices. I am sure these REAL Democrats (the ones who represent working people and often come from working backgrounds, as opposed to John Kerry and Ted Kennedy) would be appalled by MoveOn.org and the content of its Action Forum.
Mobius, MoveOn.org got extensive support from George Soros, who calls the United States a danger to world peace while blaming Israel for causing anti-Semitism. Soros is also trying to undermine the sovereignty of the United States to his internationalist world order or whatever. This, as far as I am concerned, makes Soros my country’s enemy and therefore my enemy. The same goes for his tentacles like IANSA and MoveOn.org. Just as bad is MoveOn.org’s ties to Michael Moore, who praises the terrorists who are murdering our men and women in uniform as “Minutemen” who are resisting the “occupation.” This reinforces my perception that MoveOn.org is the enemy of my country and should be treated as such, through all appropriate legal and nonviolent methods– the same methods that broke the Million Mom March’s back in 2000-2001. MoveOn.org’s knowing and willful propagation of hate speech on its Action Forum simply underscored my previous perceptions, while showing the public what this organization is really about. (I also read somewhere that Soros was trying to figure out how to get foreign money into U.S. elections, which makes matters even worse.)
Every single organization that has intervened on MoveOn.org’s behalf, except for the Jewish Funds for Justice, seems to have backed off. The National Jewish Democratic Council got mauled when it stuck its nose into this, and again when it got caught posting repackaged and relabeled anti-Semitic “Jews as Christian haters” propaganda on its Web site: http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=3172. Now it doesn’t seem as eager to defend MoveOn.org. A Jewish Voice for Peace (which is involved, by the way, with the terrorist-lovers of the International Solidarity Movement who are trying to destroy Israel) made the mistake of intervening, and probably wishes it hadn’t by now. Jewish Funds for Justice seems to be the only remaining active defender of MoveOn.org and I don’t think it will want to defend it much longer.
If the Democrats put up a MoveOn-er in 2008, I guarantee that I will back the Republican even if it is a garden vegetable, or a clone of George W. Bush.
“If the Democrats put up a MoveOn-er” goes without saying, since MoveOn is likely to put its full support behind the Democratic nominee even if it is a garden vegetable, so it looks like the 2008 race is going to see vegetable carnage worthy of a Wallace & Gromit movie.
I think someone somehow put themselves under the impression that jewschool.com is now officially solely dedicated to Bill Levinson talking about how much Bill Levinson hates moveon.org and congratulating himself for “shutting them down”.
It’s kinda like the right-wing version of Tikkun: Lerner on Lerner with a critique on Lerner by Lerner.
BZ, are you saying that 2008 is going to be a food fight between the Republican turnip and the Democratic carrot? 🙂 Well, throwing food (or more precisely rotten vegetables) at each other might be a step up from slinging mud. Come to think of it, that sounds like a replay of the 2004 election, and the 2000 election…
I voted for Bush. I tend to vote for REP or IND over DEM. Why? Democrats show no support for Israel, have KKK’s in their party ( Sheets Byrd), Hilary ( F***ing Jew Bastard)…
I hope Joe turns REP..then he may have a chance in bigger areas. The DEMS have left him out to dry.
This study (RJC) is a flawed study. Areas with larger Jewish populations are likely to be disproportionately Orthodox and Republican.
Oh thank God, what a relief! As soon as I started reading this post, I was thinking, “Please, I hope I get to hear the mythic tale of how Bill Levinson did battle with the Million Mom March, slaying the beast in his mighty crusade of justice. Though an undoubtedly thrilling saga, I have to admit some very real apprehension; after all, now that they’ve brought the Million Mom March to its knees, Bill and the other not-at-all-completely-unhinged-from-reality Jewish Republicans have set their sites upon such senior members of the Democratic brain trust as Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, and Cindy Sheehan. I’m just not sure how the Democratic Party can be expected to survive as a functioning political institution under this threat to tear out its very heart and soul.
To be fair, you have to have some real sympathy for the Jewish Republicans, given the dark forces they’re up against in their quest to persuade the Jewish electorate that the Democratic Party is little more than a Nazi front. After all, all those tolerant, liberal-minded Jews currently voting for the Democrats would surely become Republicans, if only they had access to the truth. The truth? Well, there’s the outrageous perception that the Republican Party is a gang of hypocritical queer-baiters, even though it’s the Democrats that are clamoring for pictures of Ken Mehlman in a pink tutu; that the Republicans are a racist, wetback-hunting lynch mob, when it’s well known that Robert Byrd admitted calling someone a nigger, back when he was giving the keynote address at the Al Smith nominating convention. Despite these obstacles, it strikes me as mistake to underestimate the persistence of the Jewish Republicans’ continuing quest for Truth; personally, I think if they really keep humping this story day after day for the next two years, there’s a very real possibility that by the 2008 elections, they might succeed at driving Jewish support for the Democratic Party all the way down to 86%.