Posted on 06/11/2014 2:30:40 AM PDT by nickcarraway
The dream of a Jewish Republican speaker of the House is no more.
With House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s startling ouster in a primary election this week, the man who was on a track to be the highest-ranking Jewish official in American history now appears consigned to the status of a “Jeopardy” answer. His defeat has left Jewish organizations in both parties reeling, especially the GOP’s long-suffering Jewish coalition groups.
Cantor was – and for now, remains – the No. 2 Republican in a conference of 233 lawmakers. But for Jewish Republicans, Cantor is a singular figure, the only Jewish member of the House majority and the lone Jewish leader in a party that has strenuously courted the community in recent presidential elections, to little avail.
Now, with Cantor’s defeat, there’s no longer a point man to help organize trips to Israel for junior GOP lawmakers, as Cantor routinely did. Jewish nonprofits and advocacy groups have no other natural person in leadership to look to for a sympathetic ear. No other Republican lawmaker can claim to have precisely the same relationship with gaming billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a primary benefactor of both the Republican Party and the Republican Jewish Coalition. And no other member can play quite the same role in promoting Jewish Republican congressional candidates, as Cantor did in one election after another. He is scheduled to headline a Long Island fundraiser this Saturday for Lee Zeldin, one of the few Jewish Republican House recruits this year. The event was announced only a few days before Cantor’s fateful primary. At the time, there was every expectation Zeldin would be appearing with the future House speaker, a man floated more than once for the vice presidency and for numerous statewide offices in his native Virginia.
Matt Brooks, the RJC president, called Cantor’s primary “one of those incredible, evil twists of fate that just changed the potential course of history.”
“There are other leaders who will emerge, but Eric was unique and it will take time and there’s nobody quite like Eric in the House to immediately fill those shoes,” Brooks said. “I was certainly hoping that Eric was going to be our first Jewish speaker.”
Across the aisle, the reactions to Cantor’s defeat ranged from shock and distress to barely-restrained glee. For partisan Jewish Democrats, Cantor has long been a supremely annoying figure, perceived as a front man for a conservative party that’s hostile to the values a strong majority of Jews share on issues from economic inequality to gay marriage to immigration, the central animating issue of Cantor challenger Dave Brat’s campaign.
As Democrats seek to cement a public perception of the GOP as an intolerant and homogenous party, the defeat of the nation’s leading Jewish Republican over his support for more relaxed immigration laws can only help.
And it now appears almost certain that the first Jew to lead one of the two chambers of Congress will come from the ranks of Democrats, where Jewish politicians including New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and New York Rep. Steve Israel already hold important roles of legislative and partisan leadership.
Still, several prominent Jewish Democrats expressed ambivalence on election night over the snuffing-out of a prominent Jewish political career and the elimination of a lonely figure in the House who looked – at the very least on the surface – like a receptive audience for Jewish-driven advocacy.
Rabbi Jack Moline, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Committee, called it an especially bitter pill that Cantor went down to a challenger running to his right on immigration – as Moline put it, that Cantor “has been undone by an issue that they didn’t make much progress on, but that is reflective of Jewish values.”
“From the point of view of a Democrat, I’m not disappointed to see him go,” Moline said, acknowledging: “There is always a pride in the Jewish community when one of our own makes good, as I think there is in every community. So from that point of view, we’re disappointed, like we were disappointed when Rahm Emanuel gave up his quest to be the first Jewish speaker of the House.”
Moline added: “At least in that situation, we had pride in the fact that he was chief of staff to the president of the United States and went on to be mayor of Chicago. I don’t see Eric Cantor going on to greater things in government.”
Former NJDC president David Harris, calling Cantor’s loss a “concern to nonpartisan Jewish organizations,” argued that the political takeaway for Jewish voters should be clear. “Jews are so well represented on the Supreme Court. They’re so well represented in Congress. But as a professional political class, Jewish Republicans are just not part of that party,” he said. If Cantor played a critically important symbolic role for Republican Jews, it’s unclear whether his defeat will bring immediate consequences for policy. The GOP is a staunchly pro-Israel party, even if many of its members may have never set foot in a synagogue. Other election returns Tuesday night demonstrated that: While Cantor went down, Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham easily defeated a pack of primary challengers after touting his strongly hawkish foreign policy views.
And as much as Cantor was an atypical Republican when it came to his ethnic identity, some Republican Jews shrugged at suggestions that his primary represented a real shift on substance. One GOP operative said he would be hard-pressed to name an important issue on which Cantor made the difference between success and failure for Jewish foreign policy groups, pointing out that Cantor supported defense cuts under the Budget Control Act that Jewish groups strenuously opposed.
“If I had to pick tonight, do I get to pick Lindsey Graham or Eric Cantor, it’s not a choice at all,” the strategist said. “Cantor was ineffective.”
Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who serves on the RJC board, said that from a historical perspective Cantor’s defeat was “very sad – but my politics don’t revolve around my identity as much as they do my ideology.”
“It was a real point of pride to have Eric as a Jewish Republican. There are some other Jewish Republicans running in 2014,” Fleischer said. “Let’s wait and see.”
Steve Rabinowitz, a Democratic public relations consultant who works with a range of Jewish groups, said that for non-partisan Jews, Cantor was “definitely a loss.” He cited Cantor’s reliable backing not just for Israel and tough-on-Iran policies, but also his attention to issues such as services for Holocaust survivors and support for the nonprofit sector.
“There are some in the community who are twisting themselves into pretzels tonight to figure out if it’s OK to comment on the race,” Rabinowitz said. “I have no love lost for him. I’m bemused tonight.”
“That is them doing what I mentioned to GOPinMA a week or so ago:’Using your enemies aggressiveness against them’”
Yes it is.
Generally speaking, 80% or so of all American voters identify with the general political ideology and/or political party that their parents do or did (excepting those whose parents did not participate in the American political system). It's part of one's cultural heritage. Stories relating to political figures and their relationships to gut issues get passed down from generation to generation, no matter how accurate or inaccurate they may be. In the case of current Jewish voters, Franklin D. Roosevelt is frequently one of those names viewed as an icon for some strange reason, despite the fact that he had anti-Semitic tendencies and his record vis-à-vis Jewish issues leaves much to be desired when examined objectively. So the mythological Roosevelt and his party frequently became the objects of admiration and affection as passed down through the generations in too many Jewish families. It's only with a more objective interpretation of history and a recognition of reality can this family chain of brainwashing be broken. Today, there is definitely some movement away from the left in the Jewish community, but it is slower than some of us would like.
I think it was Aaron Zelman from JPFO that said “If every Jewish family in Germany had had a Mauser Rifle and ammunition - and the WILL TO USE IT - the Holocaust would never have happened.”
Yes, there is probably a lot of truth to that. The Nazis, like just about all dictatorships, were very well aware that disarming potential opposition was a key factor in achieving and maintaining totalitarian rule. So they saw to it that Jews and other potential troublemakers were banned from ownership of firearms.
What caused Eastern European immigrant Jews (ancestors of most of today's American Jews) to adopt leftist politics in the first place was that they had very little choice in their native land, other than to oppose oppressive czarist rule and/or find a way to escape from it. In the politics of that time and place, political movements tagged as "right" were almost always anti-Semitic and anti-freedom.
That’s probably the best explanation I’ve heard...
But - given the history of persecution, one would think that American Jews - ESPECIALLY American Jews, in a country with such a tradition of firearms ownership - would be even MORE rabid self-defense advocates than any of us (put aside “Democrat” or “Republican”; I’m just talking firearms here).
So many nominal Christians also support the socialist democrats.
Oh, you are indeed correct. I am well aware of it. I know TOO many liberal “christians”.
But the source of confusion for me is how can a people with a recent history of being murdered by socialists give so much support TO socialists.
Christians have been murdered by socialists by the container-shipload too.
All has to do with who preaches the liberal dogma and disguises it as moral imperative compatible with their shallow faith in what is supposed to be their professed belief system. The “I believe in God but” crowd is a bit too numerous.
They are obsessed with all you said. Divide and conquer...
The American tradition of firearms ownership, though embedded in the Constitution as the Second Amendment, has evolved so that it is strongest in small towns and rural areas. By the twentieth century, urban and suburban areas, where most American Jews still live, more often than not adopted a mindset in which gun ownership was associated with criminality - like organized crime and mass murder. So I'd say that, generally speaking, American Jews' attitudes toward firearms pretty much reflect their urban and suburban backgrounds.
“...Christians have been murdered by socialists by the container-shipload too...”
Absolutely. I know that. Some of the first to be slaughtered in the New Soviet Utopia were Christians and the clergy.
I cant fathom anyone buying into voluntary disarmament... and then actively advocating it for all.
OK: Time to jump into this discussion with both feet, wearing boots with spikes on the soles, esp since I live in Virginia, know Rabbi Jack Moline, and have been involved both directly/indirectly in Jewish affairs since the 1960’s.
I don’t give a damn if Cantor is Jewish. Like Ari Fleischer said, it is the man’s “ideology” that counts, not his religion.
I liked Joe Lieberman as a man, but just because he’s Jewish doesn’t mean that I have to kneejerk support him. He was not good for American on too many issues for me to support him.
Re Rabbi Moline and immigration as “an issue ..that is reflective of Jewish values.”
I like Jack. A nice person, but he is so far liberal-left that he is not dealing with the real world (and since Rahm Emanuel was a friend and member of our congregation), the Chicago “curse” has infected his political soul.
I once saw Emanuel work our after-service kiddush (serving of light food/snacks) like a prostitute works a sailors’ convention. The sleaze oozed off of him, just like it did off of Saul Alinsky when I met him in 1969.
Moline has no idea what is going on in the real world. He doesn’t live on the Arizona/Texas border, doesn’t know much about drug cartels, or even Hispanic gangs in northern Virginia.
His son Max is a nice young man. I like him, but in the real world, it was my son Josh who was one of the first American troops into Iraq in March 2003, to liberate 25 million Moslems, Christians and other ethnic groups. (Also helped to liberate our Jewish homeland of Babylon and Ur).
Reality is when someone is shooting at you trying to kill you while using women and children as human shields. Reality is when Josh finally got to shoot back and kill the fedeyeen bastards. At least we were allowed to shoot the enemy in those days, not exchange them for a useless deserter. He was a defender of “women and children”, not at war with them. I’m one proud father.
Jack’s father was an American soldier in WW2 and saw the horrors of a concentration camp. However, Jack is an ardent supporter of Obama and Kerry and other regime leftists who are making new concentration camps and ethnic/religious genocide possible in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afganistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, etc. Inaction is the same as helping the enemy. If the Germany of the 1930’s means nothing else, it means that “good people did nothing” when they could have faced down tyranny. JAck seems to have forgotten this basic concept.
Kerry did his “thing” back in the 70’s to aid the North Vietnamese/VC in their murderous aggression and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, up to 2 million Cambodians including my friends, and hundreds of thousands or Laotians.
Now he’s just keeping his record intact. He’s an Obama pawn and Moline is backing him by proxy.
I don’t give one damned bit about any Jewish Democrat that I know of in Congress. In fact, if they all died today (praise God), I would curse them and piss on their graves.
They long ago forgot what it meant to be a “Jew”. It did not mean to be a Republican or a Democrat, but here in the US, it meant to be an “American” and to preserve and protect our beloved country against enemies both “domestic and foreign”. Our immigrant grandparents knew this, our fathers knew this (The Greatest Generation), and some of us know this. However, too many others have forgotten what it means to be an “American” and have gone over to the “dark side” of “liberalism”, abandoning common sense and rationality for “smoke and mirrors”, and a missing Birth Certificate (It’s probably to be found among Lois Lerner’s missing IRS emails).
Al Quaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIS, the Taliban, and all their affiliates, plus the Communists, are our “foreign” enemies.
Obama and his marxist hordes, black reparationists, Hispanic irredentists, liberal idiots (the One Percenter white rich folks), the Religious “liberation theology” Left (including some of his advisors, Rev. Wright, Jim Wallis (a Hanoi supporter in the old days), so-called “Rabbi” Michael Lerner (SDS, Seattle Liberation Front, Tikkun), and other associated criminals (Rezko and company), psychopaths (Van Jones, Anita Dunn, Keswick), and the totally incompetents heads of govt agencies (Holdren, Hansen, Jeh Johnson, Janet Napolitano, Lois Lerner and company, Sebelius, Mabus, Dempsey (JCS), Vilsack, etc., are the “domestic enemies” of America.
They are destroying America, not defending it.
I do not consider Schumer, Wasserman-Schulz, Cardin, Israel, Cohen (Tenn, a real psycho), and most of the other Jews in Congress to be worth a damned. I would say the same thing about them if they were Wiccans, Vegans, or Gozer worshippers.
Religious identity is not my criteria for leadership - sanity, pragmatism, knowledge, reality comprehension, honesty, guts, foresight, morales, and patriotism - are.
Too many older Jews and now their offspring, long ago fell for Communist/marxist propaganda about conservatives, going back to the 1930’s, the Goldwater disinformation campaign (conducted by a Soviet operative with possible ties to Obama), and a continuing reenforcement by liberal Jews like Rabbi Moline who have no idea what is going on in the real world.
At some meetings I go to (guest speakers, authors, private gatherings), I get more real-time, real-world information from people who actually participate/ed in world events, than I get from the leftist, totally incompetent mainstream media, leftist rabbis and preachers, marxist academics, talking heads on most cable TV shows, and academic know-nothings.
I’m proud if a Jewish congressman/woman is elected who will defend our country and our allies. Otherwise, I have no use for political hacks and blind allegiance “Good Germans”, be they Jewish or not.
[I’m wondering if anti-semitism will arise in the sports world cases of Dan Sterling and Dan Snyder, and if so, what the good liberal Jews of Congress will do about it. Nothing probably!]
I’d rather have no leftist/stupid Jews in Congress than to have a bunch of blind leftist idiots, Mark Levin’s “Congo-line of coconuts”, in there wrecking the country.
We Jews who are either independent or conservative (moderately liberal Jews are on the Endangered Species List), are “America Firsters” in the positive manner. We realize that America is the first and last line of defense for freedom in the world, including that of Israel, decent Afghanis and Iraqis, Nigerian Christians, Europeans including the under-attack Jews there, and Christians in the Western Hemisphere where Marxism is back on the rise in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela.
I want a politican who knows what is at stake in this global battle for survival be they Jewish or not. I don’t want one’s religion to be the “litmus test” for getting elected.
Eric Cantor was not a bad Jew. He was a bad politician. He forgot that he was supposed to serve the people, not exploit them for his ego or political career.
That’s my criteria for support and voting, and I’m proud to stick to it.
Shalom, to all, and God Bless America!
“...I’m really getting tired of reading posts like yours on this site,...”
Wasn’t meant to offend, it was an honest question, and a good answer was provided by someone else.
I’m not Jewish, and was just curious as to why a particular demographic group of people seem to vote / identify with a party that identifies itself with anti-Semitic groups and elements.
If you took offense to it, well, maybe instead of being offended - “which is a liberal tactic” typically used to silence people - you could have just answered my question, or elaborated on justiceseeker93’s explanation.
And again, this is a discussion forum. If you’re “really getting tired of reading posts like yours on this site” - don’t read it, and move on.
Hard to believe, but maybe American Jews vote on the basis of what they want (however wrongly) for America, not on the basis of foreign policy toward Israel or what happened to them in Christian Europe.
Do Americans of German or Swedish descent vote on the basis of foreign policy toward those countries?
Most Jews believe America IS different, or at least they have up to now.
They had Constitutional Conservatives in Europe?
Who knew?
“...but here in the US, it meant to be an “American” and to preserve and protect our beloved country against enemies both “domestic and foreign”....”
Amen... thank you for posting that.
And Shalom to you too...
“...Do Americans of German or Swedish descent vote on the basis of foreign policy toward those countries?...”
I sure as hell don’t. My ancestors were of Ukrainian, Austrian and Irish descent. I’ve never considered myself anything BUT American, with no hyphen-anything.
Again, my question was more to do with firearms and self-defense than anything else.
“...Most Jews believe America IS different, or at least they have up to now....”
It is and always has been.
Seems to me this article - from Politico, no less - was written PRECISELY to foment discord.
You want to argue, go argue with someone else. I already explained to you what I was talking about.
If you can’t understand it, it’s your problem, not mine.
Have a great night.
I don’t get the firearms stance either.
I suppose the argument could be made that Jews are always a tiny minority, and have had more to fear from their non-Jewish neighbors generally, not just from criminal elements.
Politico is very much a leftist site. They don’t try to persuade, they just want to reinforce each other’s beliefs.
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