Republican Jewish Coalition has no quarrel with Sarah Palin

Jews For Sarah ^ | 3/26/2011 | Benyamin Korn

[curth]

Conservative Girl with a Voice has a lively post taking “liberal Republican” David Frum to the woodshed for his recent column on CNN.com (quelle surprise!) trashing Sarah Palin. Frum – it’s ironic, his name means “religious” in Yiddish – deserves a spanking, but not quite for the reasons CGV inveighs against him.

CGV approvingly cites talk host Mark Levin that Frum is a “disgraceful, petty, Palin-obsessed Washington-insider.” And Frum does represents a resolutely left-leaning tendency within Jewish and general GOP circles. But Frum’s real sin here is that his CNN column was calculated to give the impression that there is bad blood between Gov. Palin and the Republican Jewish Coalition – a national grass-roots organization of 60,000 members.

This is a sly implication which most emphatically is not true, though our friend Sheya at Conservatives4Palin may be forgiven if he snapped at Frum’s bait. Nowhere in Frum’s column did he do the decent thing and indicate that he in no way spoke for the RJC, though he is indeed one of its 40 national board members, and also sits on the board of its think-tank, the Jewish Policy Center. Rather, his column was clearly calculated to convey the opposite, that his beef with Palin was actually RJC’s.

I knew we had trouble when my 16-year-old son, who attends a centrist, community Jewish day school, popped the question to me during Tuesday morning carpool: “Abba, why is Palin picking a fight with the Jewish Republicans?” Sputtering out my coffee, I attempted to calm myself and asked how he came to think such a thing, though of course I already presumed the answer. “Well a friend gave me this article . . .” “You mean from CNN.com?” “Well, yes, how did you know?” “Let’s just say I already wrote to the author asking him how he could write such a thing . . . “

Luckily, I was rescued later in the week by an elder statesman of the Jewish conservative movement, who told me to forget about Frum and concentrate on building a relationship between the RJC and Sarah Palin. “Articles come and go,” he advised, “but the important thing is that she deserves a fair hearing by the RJC as would any serious Republican contender.” I thanked him for helping me to stay focused on the big picture, and he was gracious enough to let on that he had learned over the years by making the same mistake.

The good news is that both the RJC and the good folks at SarahPac are on the same page. Long-time RJC director Matt Brooks was pro-active in contacting SarahPac to assure Gov. Palin’s team that Frum’s trouble-making was in no way at the behest of RJC leadership. At the same time, Mr. Brooks included an item in the RJC’s national newsletter praising as “entirely accurate” Gov. Palin’s “harsh criticism” of President Obama’s latest lame statement on Israel – this time in response to Wednesday’s terror-bombing at Jerusalem’s central bus station. (Gov. Palin had scored the President’s false moral equivalence between Jewish victims of Arab attacks, which purposely target civilians, and Arab civilian victims of Israeli military reprisals, which do everything possible to avoid civilian injuries. And thankfully, both the British and German foreign secretaries, as well as outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in their own post-bombing statements, contradicted the President’s “all-sides-are-to-blame game” by simply upholding Israel’s right and need to respond with force.)

Bottom line: Frum acted irresponsibly; what matters is good will between the incumbent GOP vice presidential nominee and the growing movement of Republican Jews. When Gov. Palin returns to Israel as she said she intends in the coming months, this time on more than a brief personal stopover with her husband, Americans of all faiths will get a better appreciation of Mrs. Palin’s deep respect for the little country in a dangerous neighborhood which she often refers to as “America’s treasured ally,” and the “touchstone” of our “Judeo-Christian civilization.”

[dalight]

I know I took a bit at their tail after this came out.. and they couldn’t say quickly enough that Frum’s remarks represented his opinions alone. But, I am glad that Brooks got out in front of this and said that they are not at all at odds with Sarah Palin.

Of the Jewish community that is conservative and following what is happening, Sarah Palin is a breath of fresh air. Yes, Jewish Libs hate her but on the whole it is for the same reason that so many others do, they have only heard the spin and frankly no one counters it. This is the nasty underside of this community. So much that is nasty and messy is not said. So people just go clueless.

[justiceseeker93]

[Palin] has high moral values which religious Jews appreciate.

Not only religious Jews but some secular Jews, some people of all faiths, and even some agnostics and atheists.

[Amerisrael]

Wasn’t this guy Frum a speech writer for W?