Free Republic

FROM OUR FEBRUARY ISSUE: Obama's overwhelming victory once again shattered the Republican Party's hopes for the Jewish vote. The causes: Canny Democratic countermeasures as well as a reduced concern for Israel among American Jews.

January 22, 2009 Obama Got 75% of Jewish Vote Randall Hoven The results are in. According to Commentary Magazine , "Obama ended up receiving 53 percent of the vote nationwide, but around 75 to 78 percent of the Jewish vote. Only 20 to 23 percent of Jewish voters pulled the lever for McCain, who received 46 percent of the vote overall. Obama scored a greater share of Jewish votes than John Kerry did in 2004. More striking, his performance almost equaled that of Al Gore among Jews in 2000, when Gore's running mate was Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew." As...

Harvard Law Professor Alan M. Dershowitz is that rare individual who is both a highly respected academic and well known to the general population. But in another regard he is even rarer. He regards himself as a man of the Left, yet on one of the defining moral issues of our time, attitudes toward Israel, he has nothing in common with the Left. He is not only one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, he spends much of his time defending Israel. He has written innumerable articles and four books defending Israel: “The Case against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others...

This is my public apology to John McCain, Sarah Palin, Republican voters, Christian evangelicals, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Mike Gallagher and everyone else in the non-Jewish universe who stands four-square behind the State of Israel. While you have written, spoken and, yes, even prayed in strong opposition to any retrofitting of American policy on behalf of the Jewish state, nearly eight out of every 10 American Jews failed to demonstrate similar resolve on Election Day.

Based on their vote, American Jews either don’t care about Israel or are fooling themselves. So concludes GrassTopsUSA columnist Don Feder, of the Boston Herald.In his column of Nov. 17, Feder writes that the fact that 77% of American Jews voted for Barack Obama in the recent Presidential election proves that Israel is far from a crucial factor in their voting patterns.“Once again, in 2008, most American Jews voted their religion – liberalism,” Feder wrote.  Feder feels that other minorities “have a clearer perception of where their interests lie.” He cites statistics compiled by the American Muslim Task Force for Civil...

Two days before the U.S. election, Judith Kessler and Nadine Bose, both of whom work for this city’s Jewish community, made their own Obama T-shirts to advertise their support. “I am not sure how all the Jews feel about Obama, but I know how I feel,” said Kessler, 49, the editor of the Berlin community’s monthly magazine, who continued wearing the shirt for several days. Most of her colleagues shared her views, she said, “because he seems intelligent, he seems moderate, and because he presumably can really understand the position of minorities in society.” Bose, the 28-year-old assistant to the...

My reasoning tells me Republican thinking and loyalty to Isreal would be attractive to Jewish Americans. Why then they vote as Democrats?

The Jewish support for Barack Obama’s historic election showed that despite lengthy and expensive efforts by Republicans, Jews remained a solid Democratic constituency, willing to vote in record numbers for a candidate who had to earn their backing. Initial exit polls indicated that around 78% of Jews voted for Obama for president, higher than the proportion of the Jewish vote won in 2004 by the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry, and close to the share captured by Senator Al Gore in 2000. No other demographic group — except African Americans — gave the first black president such overwhelming support. “The...

Exit polls from MSNBC, CNN and Fox have shown that US president-elect Barack Obama received 78 percent of the Jewish vote in Tuesday's presidential election, whilst his rival, Republican John McCain, received 21%. The almost-complete list of the new Jewish congressional caucus: An all-time record of Jewish reps in Congress. Photo: Courtesy Slideshow: Pictures of the week The polls all put Jews at 2% of the poll sample. In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry won 74% of the Jewish vote, and in 2000, Al Gore received 79%. The MSNBC data found the numbers amongst Christians in Tuesday's election were...

Barack Obama received more than three-quarters of the Jewish vote, according to exit polling. A preliminary exit poll found Obama receiving 77 percent of the Jewish vote, to just 22 percent for Republican John McCain. That’s more than the 74 percent Democrat John Kerry garnered in 2004, and close to Al Gore’s 79 percent of the Jewish vote eight years ago—when Gore had the first Jewish vice presidential nominee of a major party joining him on the ticket. The Jewish vote was 2 percent of the poll sample. The 77 percent figure is a significant rise from the 60 percent...

Along with the new Jewish year we welcomed a new cycle of Torah readings. For Californians, the first post-Sukkot Sabbath reading was particularly timely, coming as it did a mere 10 days before the 2008 elections. It should have given pause to Jewish opponents of Proposition 8, the measure aimed at amending California’s constitution to enshrine the traditional definition of marriage in state law. An assortment of arguments can be made in support of Proposition 8—from the deep and abiding connection of marriage with procreation, to the healthful effects for children of having both a mother and a father, to...

In an editorial in today’s paper, The New York Times misrepresents an anti-Obama message, which it claims amounted to “character assassination.” One of its targets is an e-mailing sent by a group of Pennsylvania Jewish activists to 75,000 Jewish voters in the Keystone state, warning of the dangers of an Obama presidency. According to The Times, the e-mailing equates “a vote for Barack Obama with the ‘tragic mistake’ of Jews who ignored the warning signs of the Holocaust.” This implies the communication suggested that Obama would somehow facilitate another Holocaust. It did no such thing. The e-mailing, from a retired...

Shalom from the McCain Campaign, In the last two days before the election we need your help! Below is the link to our Jewish online phone-bank set to make phone calls to our identified Jewish phone numbers in the GOTV PA outreach. Click on Pennsylvania as the state and please feel free to interject the word Jew or Jewish voter in the outlined script. As we all know, this can have a big impact in PA so encourage everyone you know to participate. http://www.johnmccain.com/PhoneBank/?guid=064e4430-dbdf-4f92-b2cb-69b0afb1bc7a Best, The Jewish Advisory Coalition

Comedian Sarah Silverman has gotten a lot of mileage out of the notion that older Jewish voters, especially those in Florida, need to be persuaded to support Senator Barack Obama. Yet as it turns out, those bubbes and zaydes may be the ones prodding their grandchildren to support the Democratic nominee for president. Contrary to the perception that young people are in the bag for Obama, polls indicate that younger Jewish voters are more likely than older Jews to support Republican Sen. John McCain for president. This surprising finding most recently turned up in an October 23 analysis by Gallup...

Why the Jews finally came home to Obama By late last spring, concerns about Jews deserting the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, had reached a fever pitch. Writing in his popular blog for Politico, Ben Smith declared that Obama had a "Jewish problem." In late May, Jodi Kantor of The New York Times traveled to Florida to interview the elderly Jews who were thought to be most skeptical of the Illinois Senator. Kantor's article--"As Obama Heads to Florida, Many of Its Jews Have Doubts"--included one octogenarian's ominous warning: "The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of...

WASHINGTON — Presidential candidate Barack Obama is making significant gains among Jewish voters, according to two new polls. The polls suggest that after months of hovering around 60 per cent, Obama appears to be within striking distance of the 75 to 80 per cent of the Jewish vote won by the three previous Democratic nominees for president. A Gallup tracking poll of 564 registered Jewish voters, taken over the first three weeks of October, found Obama leading Republican John McCain by a 74 to 22 per cent margin. That was a 13-point increase in support for the Democratic nominee since...

I keep telling you all that Republican candidate John Sidney McCain would win a much higher percentage of the votes of American citizens who live in Israel than any of the polls were showing. I was right. The exit polls show a very strong preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. The polls, carried out and analyzed by Keevoon, a Jerusalem-based research, strategy and communications firm, indicate that 76% of the polled voters in Israel said they voted for Republican candidate John McCain; 24% said they cast their ballot in favor the Democrat, Barack Obama. The information is based...

Jerusalem (JTA) — We believe John McCain will end up winning overwhelming support among the 250,000 Americans in Israel, for whom U.S. foreign policy can be a life-or-death matter — even from those who have never voted Republican. There are good reasons to expect Barack Obama will prove unpopular in Israel. Just look at the primary race between Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton. Democrats abroad — especially in Europe — voted overwhelmingly for Obama over Clinton, giving him a crushing 66 percent to 33 percent victory. Israel, however, was one of only two countries in the world in which Democrats...

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz took the stage at the New York premiere of his new documentary, The Case for Israel, prepared to defend the Jewish state against accusations of apartheid made by former US president Jimmy Carter. Instead, Dershowitz found himself defending a possible Democratic Obama administration to conservative Jews who argued that anyone who was worried about Israel should be for Republican John McCain. "Israel faces an existential threat from Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas... and [presidential candidate] Barack Obama wants to sit down with them," said one man who came to the microphone during a post-film question-and-answer session. "I...

Yated Neeman is departing from its usual practice and endorsing Republican candidate Senator John McCain for President of the United States in the November 4 national elections. Senator McCain is an American war hero and a recognized expert on military and foreign affairs. He is a longtime friend of Israel. He is a dedicated reformer who has demonstrated great political courage and independence. He is also a man of great decency and honesty, with a deep sense of personal honor and patriotism. While the polls and the mainstream media are predicting a victory by Senator Barack Obama, his support appears...

RADNOR, PA. -- More than 75,000 Jews throughout the Keystone state got an email Thursday from the “Republican Federal Committee of PA – Victory 2008” that compares a victory by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to Nazi victories before the Holocaust. “Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision” the email said, making a number of false or misleading assertions about Obama and adding that “Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let's not make a similar one this year!" Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League...

Israelis would elect John McCain over Barack Obama for president of the United States, a poll found. The poll found that 46.4 percent of Israelis would vote for McCain, the Republican candidate, and 34 percent for his Democratic opponent, with 18.6 undecided, Ynet reported Monday. The survey, conducted by the TNS Teleseker polling agency on behalf of the Rabin Center for Israel Studies, interviewed 500 Israelis aged 18 to 65. Among nearly half of those surveyed, or 48.6 percent, believed McCain would be better for Israel, while 31.5 percent said Obama would be better. More than 5 percent said the...

Israelis would elect John McCain over Barack Obama for president of the United States, a poll found. The poll found that 46.4 percent of Israelis would vote for Republican presidential candidate McCain, while 34 percent would vote for Democratic nominee Obama, with 18.6 undecided, Ynet reported Monday. The poll, conducted by the TNS Teleseker polling agency on behalf of the Rabin Center for Israel Studies, interviewed 500 Israelis ages 18-65.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Jewish voters nationwide have grown increasingly comfortable with voting for Barack Obama for president since the Illinois senator secured the Democratic nomination in June. They now favor Obama over John McCain by more than 3 to 1, 74% to 22%.This is based on monthly averages of Gallup Poll Daily tracking results, including interviews with more than 500 Jewish registered voters each month.Support for Obama among all registered voters was fairly stable from June through September, but then rose sharply in October -- in apparent reaction to the U.S. economic crisis. By contrast, support for Obama among Jewish...

Obama has chosen to publicly align with the friends of Israel, but the question is why Arab-Americans know so much more about what candidates are saying to us than we know about what the candidates are saying to them? Every big-city Jewish and mainstream newspaper has steadily charted the Jewish vote in this presidential election, wondering at every step along the way if any Jew not voting for Sen. Barack Obama might secretly be motivated by his inner racist or Zionist doubt. Democratic supporters and Jewish leaders have reassured Jews, as best they could, that they know Obama, and he's...

Gateway Pundit avers that Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times confirmed to him in a telephone call that his newspaper has a videotape of Barack Obama at an event with Rashid Khalidi at which Israel-bashing takes place. According to Wallsten the evening not surprisingly turned into a classic Jew-bash: "During the dinner a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace." One speaker likened "Zionist...

Released: October 25, 2008 Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby Poll: Obama 51.1%, McCain 41.6% McCain gains among independents; Obama's base still solid UTICA, New York - Republican John McCain is making a slow upward turn at week's end, but still trails Democrat Barack Obama by 9.5 points with a week and a half left before Election Day, the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby national daily tracking poll shows. Data from this poll is available here "McCain's improvement in the poll, and the fact that there is still a notable slice of the electorate that is either yet undecided or soft in their support of one candidate...

(JTA) — As a patriotic Jewish American, I care deeply about Israel’s well-being and security as well as that of our own country. In having to choose between the two major party presidential candidates, I find myself looking closely at their statements, record of accomplishments, the people who advise them now and those who influenced them in the past. I do this with our future foremost in mind, and what we could expect their policies would mean to Israel going forward. This measuring rod is critically important in the face of the unprecedented national security challenges we will face in...

Professor Alan Dershowitz is a great teacher and role model. No one has defended Israel's cause with greater courage. But I must respectfully challenge his support for Senator Barack Obama on the issue of Israel. In a recent JPost.com blog, Dershowitz wrote: "The election of Barack Obama - a liberal supporter of Israel - will enhance Israel's position among wavering liberals." That is wishful thinking. Dershowitz presumes Obama will support Israel as president. If Obama does not, however, then the political left and the "wavering liberals" will surely follow his lead. And what then? Dershowitz notes that both Obama and...

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10222008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/barack__the_jews_134701.htm?page=2

In the poll of Jewish voters (conducted April 1-30), it showed Obama getting 61% of the Jewish vote against John McCain (32%). Yet in the same poll Hillary Clinton beat Obama among Jewish voters 62% - 38%. So obviously Jews are lifelong democrats who will vote for Obama, whom they rejected in the primaries, rather than vote for McCain. Thus, for them, party loyalty is preferable to Israel loyalty. Recently I posted two articles by Yoram Ettinger, former Israeli Ambassador to the US, The Prospects of a Palestinian State and National Interests of the United States and It’s American interests,...

JOHN MCCAIN FOR PRESIDENT Posted Oct 22 2008 The Jewish Press heartily endorses John McCain for president of the United States. Senator McCain has long been the poster boy for what's made America great. He heroically served our nation in the Vietnam War, doing what he was called on to do and going well beyond, incurring great personal suffering and deprivation he could have avoided simply by trading on his family connections. For five years he famously declined to abandon his fellow prisoners and end his travail. In a time of political pandering and rank opportunism, Sen. McCain's courage, integrity...

"From Polls to Print and Now TV, Republican Jews Push Lies and Distortions About Obama," says the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC). The original Judenrats were Nazi-appointed Jews whose job was to govern Jewish ghettos and even select Jews for "relocation" to concentration camps, and a kapo was a concentration camp trustee or collaborator. Most Judenrat members and kapos at least had the excuse that they had guns to their heads (often literally). The NJDC, on the other hand, is willing to whitewash and shill for anti-Semites and other lowlifes entirely of its own volition. The National Jewish Democratic Council...

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Executive Director Matt Brooks issued the following statement today: Now that the Presidential debates are over, the Obama campaign is trying to cancel all remaining debates in the Jewish community that include the Republican Jewish Coalition. Claiming they do not like recent RJC advertisements, the Obama campaign has formally instructed all of its representatives to cancel their scheduled appearances with any representative of the RJC. Former Congressman Mel Levine (CA) yesterday informed the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center that he would no longer show up for his scheduled debate this Sunday against RJC California Director...

The Democrats have Sarah Silverman, mouthy comedienne, urging young Jewish voters in a video to "schlep it" to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for Sen. Barack Obama, the "goodest person I know." The Republicans have Jackie Mason, mouthy comedian, who, in his own video, supports Sen. John McCain and calls Ms. Silverman -- while pictures of Barbra Streisand, Sen. John F. Kerry and other Democrats flash across the screen -- " a sick yenta," and asks, "What has Obama done? Nothing!" All attempts at humor aside, the battle for the Jewish vote this year is no laughing matter....

Poll Suggests Obama Has Hit Wall of Indecision October 02, 2008 Barack Obama, appearing at a rally in Charlotte, N.C., on Sept. 21, is hovering at 60 percent support among Jews, according to a recent poll. Photo courtesy of Obama for America Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON Barack Obama has hit a wall of Jewish indecision. An American Jewish Committee survey published Sept. 25 shows the Democratic presidential nominee still hovering around 60 percent among Jewish voters. His big problem: the undecideds. The U.S. senator from Illinois scored 57 percent, compared to 30 percent of respondents who said they...

An evangelist and Middle East expert believes a substantial number of Jewish voters in the U.S. will vote for John McCain because they are deeply concerned about a Barack Obama presidency. Tom Doyle serves as the Middle East director for the strategic church-planting ministry e3 Partners, and recently released his new book Two Nations Under God: Why You Should Care About Israel. Not only does Doyle believe the people of Israel are nervous about a possible Barack Obama presidency, he believes a growing number of Jewish voters in the America feel the same. GOP and Democratic logos"Jews who live in...

Just as the Obama campaign seemed to be making progress in tamping down rumors about his alleged Muslim background and that he might be a "Manchurian candidate" for the Arab-Islamic world, up steps the Rev. Jesse Jackson to upset the falafel cart. Jackson, who doesn't speak for the Obama campaign and has no role in it, was in Evian, France, the home of the preferred water of Volvo-driving liberals, where he spoke with columnist and author Amir Taheri about what he thinks the foreign policy in an Obama administration would look like. Jackson said things would start to improve in...

Obama Campaign Withdraws From Two Jewish Debates Thursday, October 16, 2008 By: Suzanne Kurtz The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Executive Director Matt Brooks issued the following statement today: Now that the Presidential debates are over, the Obama campaign is trying to cancel all remaining debates in the Jewish community that include the Republican Jewish Coalition. Claiming they do not like recent RJC advertisements, the Obama campaign has formally instructed all of its representatives to cancel their scheduled appearances with any representative of the RJC. Former Congressman Mel Levine (CA) yesterday informed the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center that he would...

Barack Obama is the most dangerous candidate for the State of Israel since its creation in 1948. He is not, as Professor Alan Dershowitz recently put it, a "true friend of Israel" any more than Jimmy Carter was. He is certainly not "much better for Israel" than John McCain, as potty-mouthed comic dunce Sarah Silverman put it. Any American Jew who votes for Obama ought to be ashamed of him or herself. He is not in line with a single authentic Jewish principle. (Authentic Judaism, by the way, believes the veracity of the Torah, Oral Torah and Talmud, not bagels,...

Why Florida grandparents shouldn't ignore their grandchildren This weekend, hundreds of young Jews are visiting their grandparents in Florida trying to convince them to vote for Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama. Jerusalem Post columnist Jonathan Rosenblum says that the grandparents should ignore the kids. The grandchildren will seek to prove that Obama is good for Israel, but their identification with Israel bears no relationship to that of their grandparents. For them the Holocaust is the stuff of history books, not a living memory. Ditto the UN vote on Israel's creation. They did not huddle around TV sets listening to...

‘If Barack Obama doesn’t become the next president of the United States,” says comedian Sarah Silverman, “I’m going to blame the Jews.” According to the New York Times, “she’s mostly kidding.” Kidding or not, that’s the premise of “The Great Schlep” — a four-minute internet video where the popular star of her own Comedy Central series, who is Jewish herself, urges young Jews to trek to hotly contested Florida to convince their elderly grandparents to vote for Obama. Given that Jews as a demographic traditionally vote overwhelmingly Democratic anyway, it’s not clear why all this effort is necessary. But with...

With the election fast approaching, and American Jews still polling strong support for Obama, I cut a YouTube video entitled "The Jewish Case Against Barack Obama." There's a 1:40 second trailer, which can be found here, as well as the video itself, which is split into three parts (total about 20 minutes). Part I discusses Obama's advisors. Part II covers his friends. Part III touches his running mate and his own statements, and concludes. Every American Jew, and every American supporter needs to watch this video before voting. Barack Obama is the most frightening candidate for pro-Israel Americans since the...

By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News wslater@dallasnews.com AUSTIN – In a significant shift in party support from four years ago, monthly churchgoers are backing Democrat Barack Obama in this year’s presidential race, according to a new poll. Mr. Obama, who has tried to tap faith-based voters, has the support 60 percent of Americans who attend religious services once or twice a month, according to the survey for the nonpartisan group Faith in Public Life. Also Online Evangelical right slow to support McCain Democrat John Kerry lost that group in 2004. At the same time, Mr. Obama has made...

Betty Friedan couldn't have predicted Sarah Palin. Why do liberal Jews have such a problem with Sarah Palin? One would think that the die-hard feminists in the Jewish community would trumpet the ascension of a woman to the second spot on a presidential ticket, much as they did over two decades ago when Geraldine Ferraro took center stage with Walter Mondale in a quixotic attempt to unseat Ronald Reagan. At the time, Gloria Steinem and her feminist clones were tripping over each other to see who could best herald the Democratic vice presidential contender as the modern Susan B. Anthony...

Donors Albert Joseph and Talat Othman (left to right), Professor Rashid Khalidi, Professorial Lecturer Farouk Mustafa, Dean Janel Mueller and donor Jamal Alwattar gather at a recent celebration in honor of the first Ibn Rushd Lectureship, to which Mustafa has been named. Donor Antoin Rezko, who attended the event, is not pictured.

The local retirement community known as Century Village is just one outpost in a statewide network of Century Villages, Florida's largest chain of retirement complexes. It is also a time capsule of the New York Jewish gestalt, circa 1965, transplanted intact to the golf greens of Palm Beach County. If a small, unscientific sampling of the shoppers in the Hamptons Plaza mall, directly across from the complex, is any indication, John McCain's choice of running mates may have pushed the residents of this heavily Democratic enclave back in Barack Obama's direction. "I was leaning towards McCain," growled Marvin Weinstein, 74,...

Nancy Factor listened intently as Halie Soifer, Jewish vote director for the Barack Obama campaign in Florida, laid out the senator's steadfast commitment to Israel. A Republican among Democrats at this gathering in West Boca, she raised her hand. "I came in confused and I am still confused," Factor said. "I guess my education is still based on hearsay. I keep hearing taxes, taxes, taxes, and the reverend," Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Still, Factor said Soifer's talk in the Orthodox Jewish, predominantly Republican neighborhood of Montoya Estates was amazing and she was considering voting for Obama. As a...

Jackie Mason takes on Sarah Silverman and her video for The Great Shlep

Obama stuck at 60 percent of Jewish vote Ron Kampeas A new survey from the American Jewish Committee shows Barack Obama still hovering around 60 percent among Jewish voters. His big problem: the undecideds. WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Barack Obama has hit a wall of Jewish indecision. The American Jewish Committee survey published Thursday shows the Democratic presidential nominee still hovering around 60 percent among Jewish voters. His big problem: the undecideds. The U.S. senator from Illinois scored 57 percent, compared to 30 percent of respondents who said they would vote for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). That’s consistent...