Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
The Christian right's passionate embrace of Israel has raised Republican hopes that Jewish voters will abandon the Democrats.
May 14, 2002 | The Anti-Defamation League, one of the country's foremost Jewish advocacy groups, has spent years battling the theocratic initiatives of the Christian right. So Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, was "happily surprised" when he got a call from the ADL asking permission to reprint his essay "We People of Faith Stand Firmly With Israel," which explained Christian support for the country in both geopolitical and evangelical terms. "For many, there is no greater proof of God's sovereignty in the world today than the survival of the Jews and the existence of Israel," Reed's piece said. Two weeks ago, the ADL published it in a half-page New York Times ad.
The ad was one of the most visible examples of the new pro-Israel alliance between liberal Jews and the Christian right, but it was far from the only one. That same week, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer -- an evangelical to the right of President Bush -- was invited to address a breakfast meeting at the Israeli embassy, something he says he couldn't have imagined happening five years ago. At last month's pro-Israel rally in Washington, the crowd welcomed Christian right-wingers including Dick Armey and Janet Parshall, head of the National Religious Broadcasters Association. Less than a week later, Tom DeLay addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, and a week after that, John Ashcroft was invited to speak to the ADL -- despite a statement the group released last January criticizing Ashcroft's statement that in America, "We have no king but Jesus."
Hardcore Christian conservatives were once the major force distancing Jews from the Republican Party. Suddenly, they're the chosen people's closest friends, on Israel at least. Thus while the political fallout from the Middle East stalemate is still unpredictable, Republicans are tantalized by the idea that right-wing support for Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon's hawkish policies will win Bush the lasting fealty of large number of American Jews. The same week that DeLay spoke to AIPAC, New York Times pundit William Safire tried to parlay conservatives' new concord with Jews into a lasting political realignment, summoning his overwhelmingly Democratic-voting Jewish brethren to join the Zionist GOP in a column called "Democrats vs. Israel."
Reed, currently chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, says he predicts "historic levels" of Jewish support for Bush in the 2004 vote, higher even than the 39 percent Reagan received during his first presidential election. The Republican Jewish Coalition, already salivating at the prospect of new recruits, has released a poll by Frank Luntz showing that, if the election were held today, 42 percent of Jews said they would vote for Bush. Matt Brooks, the coalition's executive director, reports a "huge" increase in membership and fundraising, and the Washington-based group has recently opened offices in South Florida and Los Angeles. "I'd go so far as to say this president has the potential to realign the political landscape in the Jewish community for generations to come much in the same that FDR did in the aftermath of World War II," Brooks says.
But taking the long view is crucial when talking about the Middle East as well as about American electoral politics. After all, Republicans have been predicting an imminent Jewish exodus from the Democratic Party for the last three decades. In 1972, Roland Evans and Robert Novak speculated in the Washington Post about "a massive pro-Nixon swing among Jewish voters." In 1980, a story in the Christian Science Monitor announced that "the traditional [Jewish] alliance with the Democratic Party has eroded." And in 1991, the year before 80 percent of Jews voted for Bill Clinton, an article in the Forward said, "[Matt] Brooks sees an 'incremental shift' among Jewish voters as the GOP gains a few percentage points each election."
But in fact, Jewish support for Republicans presidential candidates has actually been in decline since the '80s. In 1980, Reagan took 39 percent of the Jewish vote, and in 1988, Vice President George Bush garnered 35 percent. But in 1996, Bob Dole got a mere 16 percent and George W. Bush received only 19 percent. Bush's administration is more closely aligned with the religious right, traditionally anathema to mainstream Jews, than any in history. Despite the ADL's current cooperation with Ralph Reed, executive director Abraham Foxman still says, "The religious right, its dream is to have a Christian America that would make us second-class citizens."
That's why Ira Foreman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, says, "You're not going to see a dramatic shift" in Jewish voting patterns. "I'm willing to put money on it," he continues. "So much of the Jewish community's agenda" -- which includes support for abortion rights, separation of church and state and other civil liberties issues -- "is dramatically opposed by the Republican agenda as it exists today."
Yet a dramatic shift among Jews isn't necessary to tip the electoral balance. Even a small change in the Jewish vote could make a huge difference in states like Florida and New York, and many leaders see that as a distinct possibility. According to a Washington Post story, Jews made up 14 percent of all New York voters in the 2000 election, and they've shown their willingness to go GOP before, supporting Gov. Pataki and Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg in large numbers. In Florida, Jews make up almost 5 percent of the electorate -- far larger than the margin between Gore and Bush in the last election. A Jewish swing to the right in either state could be decisive in keeping Bush in the White House.
Brooks' numbers aren't wholly reliable -- after all, the 42 percent support for Bush the Luntz poll measured was without a Democratic opponent, and at the height of Bush's popularity. But Bush's dismal showing among Jews in the 2000 election may be misleading as well -- he garnered 3 percent more of the Jewish vote than Bob Dole did, even though he was running against the first Jewish vice presidential candidate in history. "One would have thought that with that historic event, the Jewish vote would have been even less," says Foxman. "There is something of a shift in the votes of the Jewish community. They are not automatically Democratic."
