Posted on 07/25/2002 5:27:33 PM PDT by RCW2001
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| JULY 26, 2002 | | current issue | back issues | subscribe | |
Us and Dems: Jews Still Not Voting GOP
By IRA FORMAN"It seems clear that, come November 7, hundreds upon thousands of Jews will be violating the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not vote Republican."
"There is an evolution away from the [notion] that it's immoral to vote conservative, or that you must as a Jew vote Democratic."
"Jewish voters... are finding the Republican Party increasingly attractive."
The above declarations could have been lifted from any one of scores of op-eds, news articles or analysis pieces that have appeared in the national media over the last two months. But they were not. They are quotes from conservative spokesmen, pulled from stories published during the last three decades in such periodicals as the National Journal and The New York Times.
But despite these 30 years of prediction of a Republican realignment in the Jewish community, the last ten years have witnessed a resurgence of Jewish support for Democratic candidates. According to the one definitive survey of American Jewish voting, the VNS exit poll data from the 1972-2002 elections, Jews have gone from voting 2-1 Democratic in the 1970s and 1980s to 3-1 or 4-1 in the 1990s and the 2000 election.
From this data, one might assume that this phenomenon — ongoing false predictions of Jewish Republican voting — is more a reflection of the wishful thinking of Republican Jews who have been wandering in the political wilderness for 80 years than of any real sustained voting patterns.
The first clue to this wishful thinking is the changing reasons given over time for the impending shift in voting patterns. In the past we were told that Jews were becoming Republicans because they were becoming the wealthiest subsection of American society and thus were beginning to vote their pocketbooks. Later, when the rise of incomes did not induce rising Republicanism, we were told that Jews would switch to the GOP because of increasing antagonism between the community and African American Democratic politicians like Jesse Jackson. Now we are asked to believe that the reason for the "coming" change in allegiance is because Republicans and the Christian right love Israel and Democrats don't.
A second manifestation of this wishful thinking is a willingness to distort reality and engage in blatant double standards. An example of this new type of "analysis" that purports to find reasons for Jews becoming Republicans was a column published in The New York Times in April of this year titled "Democrats v. Israel." In this "analysis," Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle was charged with sabotaging pro-Israel legislation. Not only was the charge completely false, but Daschle was the one who broke the logjam blocking the "Israel Solidarity" legislation that passed both the House and Senate in May.
Moreover, many of the conservative analysts who derided former Democratic president Bill Clinton for policies such as refusing to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem or for trying to forge a peace agreement at Camp David in 2000 are the same folks who are strangely silent as Republican President Bush continues the Clinton policy on the embassy move and as his administration takes up the banner of creating "Palestine" as part of their own sponsorship of a peace process.
Finally, these analysts are unmasked by their creative use of voting statistics. Rather than rely on the one universally accepted set of Jewish voting data — the VNS exit polls — these folks fall back on fatally flawed partisan research, using studies with sample sizes that are so small that they are meaningless, or citing mayoral election statistics to prove changing partisan proclivities. The latter method is particularly misleading. Even in earlier decades when Jews were voting 90% Democratic in congressional and presidential elections, they continued to sometimes vote for Republican candidates for city offices — the same pattern we are seeing today. Local issues, not partisan affiliations, drive municipal elections.
When all is said and done these Republican Jewish predictions are wrong because they avoid examining the basic structure of American politics. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Republican Party draws the base of its support from the religious right. Thus 90% of the agenda of the GOP is diametrically opposed to the agenda of 90% of American Jewry.
As long as the Tom DeLays of the Republican Party accompany their support for Israel with the advice that "Christianity offers the only viable, reasonable, definitive answer" to life's questions, American Jews will find a viable, reasonable and definitive rationale to vote for pro-Israel Democratic alternatives.
Ira Forman is executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council and co-editor of the "Jews In American Politics" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
"You should read up on the actual actions of the Communist part and their fronts. They murdered thousands of non-Communist leftists. There is no greater conflict than internicine ones where one side is totalitarian in nature."
My opinion is that all leftist (socialist) philosophy, if applied, results in a tendency toward totalitarianism or a decrease in individual liberty, which is essentially the same thing. I undersand that many Leftists disagree, while others do agree, but don't make it public, as they wish to reap the rewards of authority. So I would say that there are elements of totalitarianism in any Leftist "side," even if unintentional.
Strictly speaking all increases in government power are a reduction of liberty. However, when trying to understand the left, you need to look at the ideologies and not just the long term effects.
"No, there are plenty of non-communist traditions in the left: Anarchism, Democratic Socialism, and the welfare state."
Nevertheless, there has been and still is considerable sympathy for commmunist regimes in the American Left. Certainly, after Stalin's death, when the truth became public, many Leftists took an anti communist position that they hadn't before. Which American left? The anarchists and the Free-Unionists always hated communists. Certain socialists did sympathise with the Soviets. You must also understand that the Communists were split in the 1930's onwards. There were Trotskyites who stayed loyal to the Soviet Union, and Trotskyites who saw the Stalinist adn Post-Stalinist regimes as betrayals to Lenninism. The CP members took Kruschev's speech on Stalin very hard. It crippled them as many left the movement.
On the other hand, the so called new-left was always sympathetic to the Soviets but opposed the leadership. They looked towards the non-Soviet states. They claimed that Tito was a democratic reformer creating true communism. Then they picked Mao, then Castro, then Ho, Polt Pot....
Ronald Radosh has a good short book on Communism in America, Commies: The new left, the old-left, adn the left over left.
i don't know what the position of the Forward was in teh 1930's. I believ it was split. I do know that it became officially anti-communist after teh Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement.
For more information on the role of the Forward in the Cold War, check out this article.
Did Jay Lovestone Win the Cold War?
http://www.forward.com/issues/1999/99.04.23/arts.html
"It depends on how you define the Israeli right. "
I don't really define them, however perhaps you could for me, I would take it as a favor.
The Center-Right:
There is the Likud Party, which is free-market and generally secular.
Yisrael B'Aliya (Free-market Immigrant, mostly Russian immigrants. Led by Natan {Anatoly} Sharansky)
The Nationalist Right, in a coalition of National Union-Yisrael Beitenu)
Yisrael Beitenu (Free-market, pro-immigration, nationalist.)
Herut (Splinter group of dissident Likudniks, led by Benny Begin. Free-market nationalists)
Tekuma (Religious Nationalists)
Moledet (religious nationalists calling for the transfer of Arabs from Yesha)
Religious Right:
National Religious Party (Zionist Orthodox. Tekuma split from them)
United Torah Judaism (Orthodox, not particularly Zionist, usually joins any government)
Shas (Orthodox Party for Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews)
Parties that defected to Labor in the One Israel Coalition.
Gesher: Formerly a Sephardic branch of Likud. They sold out for money.
Meimad: Formerly the left-wing of the National Religious Party.
Tsomet: Once a Zionist Socialist PArty. They were bout off back under Rabin to support the Oslo accords. They really no longer exist.
In the next elections, it is possible that the National Religious Party will regain its right-wing (Tekuma) and itse left-wing (Meimad).
As you can see Israeli politics are messy.
I'm aware that Israel has been in a "survival" situation for the entire 54 years of its existence though I'm not too sure how that relates to its socialism.
War and big government always go together. Also natioanlists have had to bribe Socialists to keep large government majorities. Hence there is a National Unity governmetn today with Labor/One Israel part of the government. The cost has been limited negotiating room with the Palestinian and the with Labor Unions.
Too simple by far. This isn't between the wahabbis and the rest of the world, this is between islam and the rest of the world.
Wahabbism seems not to be a prerequisite for muslims turning into treacherous genocidal nuts at the drop of a hat. Just reading a few muslim websites in the US, randomly sampled, is enough to prove that. It is also enough to prove that islam should be illegal, and that muslims should be denied citizenship or residence anywhere but in the islamist countries where they can live out their lives under Sharia, stone each other, and have fun with chopping off limbs.
In fact, every Sharia-based country should be quarantined with nothing getting in or out, and any military buildup should be flattened the moment it appeared.
What we have here is another inane and superficial article that misses the point. They just seem to be popping up all over.
They are also virulently anti-Christian.
However, when trying to understand the left, you need to look at the ideologies and not just the long term effects.
I'm sure you're probably right, I should look in more detail at the ideology, though I guess the long term effects are the direct result of the ideology.
I have read Radosh's book (thought the title was humerous) along with Horowitz' Radical Son. Was kind of amazed by what I learned, as it was a whole world of which I had never really been aware.
I'm also a long time member of a Reform temple. I've recently been spending some time trying to figure out how Reform Judaism came to be (what I now consider) part of the "Left," as that whole situation aggravates me more than a little. Nobody seems to want to discuss it much.
Glad to know there are free market forces in Israel. Most (though not all) folks in the Jewish community that I hear speaking about it seem to favor the other side.
The rest of what you say is merely angry ranting, and unworthy of response.
So you say. It may very well be the "center", at the moment, but that doesn't make much of a difference, seeing the behaviour of muslims not directly connected to wahabbism. So far, only one thing seems consistent within islam: the pathological lies.
The Muslim world may have been relatively poor and backward for 200-300 years, but it has only become homicidal relatively recently, simultaneous with the rise of Wahabbism as an ideological export from Saudi Arabia.
You're out of your tree, and probably a prime example of why there's plenty reason not to trust even a "non-wahabbi" muslim. Islam has been on a war footing before, you know, and been tossed back to the sands :).
Geez. You wouldn't happen to be connected with "MuslimAmerica", would you?
Yes. Although there are places where islam is contained, like in Turkey. But even in such places islam is working towards transforming the country into a Sharia-based one, which would mean a state based on violent repression and barbarism.
True. There are some Muslims in Italy that seem remarkably sane, for example. Some of the Muslims coming out of the Balkans as refugees are also pretty much "Muslim in name only" and secularized.
However: this would seem a state of affairs that is prone to change very quickly, for example when the Muslim population reach a certain percentage of the total (call it "critical mass"). I also have a problem actually trusting even a "relaxed" Muslim, knowing that the religion actually endorses and even demands that the followers practice lying if it helps to expand the islamic influence and convert or kill the infidels.
Come to think of it, I haven't heard much about Islamic jihadism etc. in Bangledesh either.
They're getting there, if they don't manage to fight off their own fundies. Another muslim country on the slope.
Morocco is led by a king, I think, who is as much a flake as Gadaffi even if not into terrorism. What Morocco will be a year or two down the road is really anyones guess, but any change will probably not be for the better. It may be significant that Morocco recently have show signs of some very lowlevel beliggerence towards Spain.
Anyway, of course there are exceptions - but I think you'll find that the exceptions tend to be shortlived and unstable and that the sheer aggression, hatred and delusions of Islam forms the baseline of the religion.
Really not easy to say. Culture is a big part of it. And a government not afraid to clamp down when necessary, I think. Not soft on terrorism, or plans to overthrow the government.
But of course, even in Turkey there are islamists working toward the goal islamists are usually working towards.
Actually, nice socio-economic statistics may not matter all that much. They have a fundamentalist movement up in arms.
Look to Iran, and you'll see how much an illusion a westernized and well-to-do muslim society can be. Or to Lebanon.
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