(CA) Press Enterprise oped: Jews veer from party line

[question everything]

(it does not give the author's name...)

(snip)

Most Jews vote Democratic, and they have for a long time. They have voted in huge majorities for Democratic nominees since FDR created the New Deal. Several Republican nominees since have only occasionally increased Jewish voting percentages. Dwight D. Eisenhower won 40 percent of the Jewish vote against Adlai Stevenson in 1956; Ronald Reagan won 39 percent against Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush won 35 percent against Michael Dukakis in 1988. He slipped to 11 percent against Bill Clinton in 1992. Although George W. did a little better with 19 percent against Al Gore four years ago, the president should do better in November. Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York who is as partisan as a Democrat comes, is a Bush man this year.

(snip)

Critics of George W., Jewish and otherwise, complain that he plays to evangelical Christians (among the best friends Israel has), but there's good reason for people of different faiths, including moderate Muslims in America, to encourage the president's strong stand against terrorism. Koch, like a growing number of his co-religionists, doesn't think a President Kerry could withstand the pressures from the left-wing radicals of his party, no matter how hard they bit their tongues in Boston. These lefties are hostile to Israel, and cultivate strong links to anti-American partisans in Europe, especially in France and Britain.

John Kerry tells Jewish audiences what they want to hear, and when he imagines he's safely out of their sight, flip-flops. During the primaries, in a speech to the Arab-American Institute, he denounced the fence Israel was building on the West Bank. "We don't need another barrier to peace," he said. Eight months later, with the Democratic nomination safely tucked away, he sang a different tune: "The security fence is a legitimate act of self-defense erected in response to the wave of terror attacks against Israeli citizens."

(snip)

Many Jews agree with Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who calls President Bush "the best friend Israel ever had." In January, 31 percent of the Jews surveyed in a major poll said they would vote for the president's re-election. The perils of Middle Eastern politics and worldwide terrorism trump everything else. When Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981, the world universally - and naively - condemned the raid. Had it not been destroyed, there would be no argument today about whether Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.

(snip)

TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES

Online at: http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/syndicated/stories/PE_OpEd_Opinion_op_807_fields.e6f9.html

[still_one]

1. BS, trying to use one brush to paint a group

Most Jews will vote Democratic this election, no matter what the shrills say.

Incidently, most Jews in this country supported Labor over the Likud party.

The most important thing is most Jews this country are AMERICANS

[bluestateguy]

2. Kerry's voting record is very much to the liking of AIPAC

Any Jewish votes lost to Bush--and it won't be that many--will be made up by new Muslim and Arab votes, and gay votes, all of whom will give Kerry better percentages than Al Gore received in 2000.

[still_one]

3. most of the Arab and the Jewish vote will go to Kerry

[olddem43]

4. And don't forget, Kerry himself is part Jewish.

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

7. His grandparents were Jewish (name was changed from Kohn) and

they converted to Catholicism before coming to this country if I'm not mistaken, so Kerry's not really half-Jewish. Actually, one can't be half-Jewish (I happen to be Jewish myself) One's "Jewishness" as it were depends on if the mother is Jewish.

The reason for this is that one cannot deny who the mother of a child is (at birth, obviously), while it is harder to prove who the father is if the question of paternity were to come up.

Just a little bit of trivia.

[movonne]

5. I find that Jews that live in this country and vote for another countries

politics, instead of what is good for the country they live in.

[tomfodw]

12. This strikes me...

...as too close for comfort to the old anti-Semitic canard that American Jews have "dual loyalties" - i.e., care more about Israel than they do about the US. That may be true of a very few Jews - just as a very few Irish-Americans may care more about the situation in Northern Ireland than they do about the US, etc.

If the person who posted this has evidence that "Jews who live in this country" (seemingly referring to all Jews) actually do care more about "another countries politics" (gee, which country could that be), they should present the evidence instead of engaging in Jew-baiting. Israel is important to American Jews (and should be important to everyone), but thankfully we will base our votes on what is good for this country, the same as all other voters.

[11cents]

6. A question for "question everything"

Are you suggesting that this piece of wingnut freepery has any credibility? All reliable polling shows that Jews will vote Democratic this year in the same proportion that they have for the last several decades (averaging between 70 and 80 percent). Note that the only evidence the author gives to the contrary refers to an unnamed poll done in *January* -- which in fact shows that Jews will vote 69% Democratic.

Anyone who would refer to Ed Koch, a conservative crypto-Republican (and nutcase) for years upon years as "as partisan as a Democrat comes" is either an idiot or a willful misleader, i.e., a liar. The nonsense in this article is patent and obvious, so why did you post it?

[question everything]

8. I don't know. It is a syndicated column

though I don't know by whom. This means that it could appear in several publications around the country and would be too easy for many, on both left and right to swallow these nonsense.

I posted here as an alert to DUers and appreciated most of the comments here. While many older American Jews, who remember the days of WWII, may vote according to the candidate's support for Israel, and will convince themselves that these coincide with the interests of the U.S., most American Jews, in my experience, put tolerance and civil liberties above all, and the "Jesus" stuff carried by Bush scares them. At least, it should.

I remember back in 1988, a Jewish leader in a small Midwestern community commented that most Jews would vote for Dukakis, even though the stock market and hence, the personal checkbooks of many, might doing better under Reagan. Until Clinton came to the White House, it was accepted, I guess, that Republicans were better for the economy.

[thebigidea]

9. since when is Koch is "as partisan as a Democrat comes"?

he's been a lunatic for quite a while now, certainly no fierce supporter of the Democratic Party...

[Classical_Liberal]

13. He was a Reaganite in the 80s

this is completely true.

[Catfight]

10. This is laughable. Larry David wouldn't even screw a chick because

she had a picture of Bush, in Curb Your Enthusiasm. So don't tell me Jews like Bush, Jews can spot a dictator wannabee from a mile away.

[PlanetBev]

11. Damn straight, Cat Fight

We can smell Fascists a mile away. For every Neo-Con idiot like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, there is an Al Franken and Robert Greenwald