Posted on 02/13/2007 10:00:19 PM PST by Mount Athos
It is no secret that Jews in America have historically not favored the Republican Party. Several polls estimated that only 25 percent of Jews voted for Bush in 2004. Although disputed for of its small sample size, the National Jewish Democratic Council's 2006 poll showed only 12 percent of Jews voted for the GOP. The Jewish Community Relations Council estimated that Bush got just 19 percent of the Jewish vote in 2000.
Commentators in the Jewish community and party pollsters debate endlessly why Jews are not more favorably disposed toward the GOP. Jews are wealthier and more educated than the average American, generally oppose affirmative action and favor strong support of Israel. On these counts the GOP should, many say, have greater appeal.
Is it because Jews have an historical affinity for FDR and the party of immigrants and the "little guy"? Is it because of Jews' religious devotion to "tikkun olam" — repair of the world — which they translate to support for governmental social services? Maybe some of each but perhaps something else is at work
The dustup over the location of Mitt Romney's presidential announcement — the Henry Ford Museum — may be revealing. For Jews over the age of 40 or so, the name Ford means more than Mustangs and American innovation. Ford, of course, was a notorious anti-Semite, publisher of the International Jew (an update of the Protocols of Zion), and an apologist for Hitler who received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler's Nazi government in July 1938. In many Jewish homes, owning a Ford was verboten.
He was no cultural icon.
Fast forward to today. As soon as Romney announced that he would make his presidential announcement at the Ford Museum, the accusations and statements started to fly. The National Jewish Democratic Council came out first, chastising Romney for making a pilgrimage to the site of this famous anti-Semite. Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks fired back in a press release today, saying, "I'm saddened and disappointed by the attack today by the NJDC against Gov. Romney."
Pointing out that former President Clinton had once said nice things about Ford, the RJC said that "The RJC believes that the NJDC does a disservice to Gov. Romney's strong record of support for the Jewish community and to their own reputation by their actions."
The NJDC responded, ""Presidential campaign announcements are as much about symbolism of the location as the substance of the speech. Mitt Romney went to a museum named after the most premier anti-Semite and xenophobe in American history. But his choice of location suggests that he should do his homework on basic American history."
It is doubtful either of these groups believe Romney is really an anti-Semite. Democratic consultant Dan Gerstein perhaps said it best: "I don't think Romney is guilty of anything other than obliviousness.
But you could argue that obliviousness is indicative of a broader problem with the social conservatives Romney is trying to court, which is a lack of sensitivity to the concerns many Jews have about their place in American society."
Indeed, the incident may say something not only about Romney but about the GOP's problem with Jews. In his boatload of advisers, Romney apparently did not have anyone to say, "You know, a lot of Jews really hate Ford, and it might mess up your message. Let's try Edison's lab to make a point about American innovation."
The GOP has become a rural, overwhelmingly Christian and Southern party. It is not populated by urban ethnics who, even if they aren't Jewish, understand Jews' cultural references and sensibilities. Ask an Italian New Yorker in October why the restaurants are empty, and he'll say "It's Yom Kippur, silly." You would never catch a Greek from Chicago saying, as a Republican from southern Virginia just did, that asking the state to apologize for slavery was like "asking the Jews to apologize for killing Christ."
In short, the Republicans are not just our kind of people, many Jews say. They don't sound like us, they don't talk like us and they don't understand us. Unless and until that changes, Jews likely will likely be voting overwhelmingly Democratic for years to come.
Hey, you don't have to be sorry about that piece of information. It good news, thanks.
As noted in my posts #s 172 and 200, Henry Ford himself was a Democrat.
That's one fact that today's Democrats will never let out publicly if they have their way, because it makes them look like the jerks that they are.
He was no cultural icon.
Henry Ford, the man who gave us the assembly line and living wage for factory workers was an icon of industry and culture.
Now he devloved into a conspiratorial lunatic. However, hi isolationist anti-Semitic rants and his importation of Arabs into America is right at home in the Democrat party of today.
Why doesn't Ms. Rubin comment about the thinly veiled Antisemitism of Jimmy Carter and Wesley "KLA member for Life" Clarke? How about the choice of a radical Imam to be a prayer leader at the last Democrat leadership conference?
This isn't commentary. It is perpetuation of a double standard and propaganda by the media.
Those Jews in the leftist shtetl of the New York Duranty Times won't get the truth. Those who read the NY Sun and NY Post may see a bit of it.
I thought that the idea was that politics and religion shouldn't mix. If a rabbi's political ideology is so crucial to his being hired, I would say that these Jewish leftists who would discriminate along such lines are big-time hypocrites.
Of course they are, they are political animals who would sell all they touch on the altar of the Democrat Party. They love their party more than they love our country and they hate President Bush more than they hate any of the enemies of Zion.
Leftist patterns of Jewish voting in America comes from the socialism and utopianism of the 1880-1920 Great wave. Jews who came earlier assimilated and were largely from western Europe. Jews who came after World War two fled communism.
2. Only 43? I thought we'd be more that 10%
You and I are certainly in agreement.
The Jew in Europe has often been depicted as an outsider - but this is not true. Because other groups swept in from the steppes, or over mountains, or sailed across bodies of water (such as the English Channel), there is no one country in Europe that can claim it is absolutely populated by the "original" population.
Most of those other groups who came from elsewhere to Europe - came AFTER the Jews were already in residence.
As for Jewish contributions to the fabric of the countries in which they lived - it has indeed been out of proportion to their numbers and often is an intrinsic part of the extant culture.
But what does make the Jew stand apart - is that he has never come as a conqueror. The intent was to live and hopefully prosper not to subjugate.
I can only add that Henry Ford was indeed a Democrat in his own time (please see my posts #s 172 and 200), so it's quite appropriate that he would still be welcome in today's Democratic Party, the heirs to their tainted political legacy.
There is some truth to the statement that there was some squeamishness about owning Fords among American Jews (especially in Detroit) at one time, but that time has long passed, as the Ford heirs have clearly repudiated the patriarch's antisemitism.
Even in the United States, nationalist and Christian oriented groups in the period between the World Wars, like the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and the Silver Shirts and the Christian Front in the 1930s, and men strongly identified with those groups, like Henry Ford, Charles Coughlin, and Gerald L.K. Smith, blamed the Jews or Jewish influences for many of the problems of the country.
Althiough much of the isolationist literature of 1937 could be revised slightly and be published as current events today in leftist magazines.
he post-World War II conservative movement was largely free of these influences, and several of its leaders, such as Frank Meyer and Milton Friedman, were of Jewish background.
Milton Friedman was Jewish. Frank Meyer and Frank Chodorov, who co-fouding Fusionist Conservatism with Buckley, became Catholic largely due to Buckley's influence. Ralph De Toledano, the only Sephardic Jew of the group just passed away on February 3rd.
Vicomte13 is responding to grievence politics with those of her own. It's sad.
Jews voted Republican in every mayoral election in New York since 1989. This included two times where the Democrat candidates were Jewish.
DIY -It's a good thought, but Jewish congregations are very independent, and hire and fire their own Rabbis. I think a Republican rabbi would have trouble getting hired in most American Jewish congregations.
So it is tradition then that continues to mold Jewish people to stay democrat or liberal thinkers. ?
Hard to imagine, this is about Alan, not the Jews. Does anyone care, heck, we both know virtually no one knows Fords background in this regard.
Speaking for myself only, industrial brilliance doesn't offset moral failings of this magnitude. At the same time, he acknowledged his error. And it's not my place to judge either his conduct or his apology. Since neither are of any consequence any more.
I never got around to responding to your AIPAC post. Nothing to say to excuse political bias in what should be an apolitical organization.
I'm not sure Clark has anything to veil, Carter, the veil is gone. And no, the NYT doesn't think so.
I don't think this entered the mind of anyone on the Romney campaign. However if you're suggesting they were aware of Ford's role in spreading antisemitism in America, but ignored it because they thought he was a Dem, a tenuous conclusion but irrelevant, then they deserve condemnation.
I am a conservative Republican Jew and have been a Republican since I could vote. BTW, there are many of us on FR.
I, too, say that many on this thread shouldn't assume ALL Jews are political idiots.
BTW, the last election was lost because conservatives stayed home to teach the GOP a lesson. The only problem with that lesson was that the entire country now has to suffer.
There's enough blame to go around without blaming ALL Jews and labeling them Liberal.
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