Rosner: Jews and the 2008 Election

Aaron Keyak — January 21, 2009 – 5:52 pm | Barack Obama | Democrats | Election 2008 | Foreign Policy | Iran | Israel | McCain | Republicans | Stop the Smears Comments (0) Add a comment

Shmuel Rosner wrote a piece titled, "Jews and the 2008 Election," for the February 2009 edition of Commentary. As the most recent article on the Jewish vote in the 2008 elections, it is well worth reading, but there are clearly some parts with which I disagree. For example, Shmuel claims, "the GOP can honestly claim it is a far better friend to Israel and the Jewish people than its rival." Clearly, I do not agree with this statement. Although, it is true that some in the GOP may claim this to be the case, it is simply not true that Republicans are "far" better friends to Israel and the Jewish people. I'm not going to take a lot of space in this post to fully refute Shmuel's claims, but it has been pointed out more than a few times that this doesn't seem to be the case.

That being said, here are a few excerpts that I thought might be interesting, although you should really read the entire piece.

But the Jewish flirtation with the GOP proved to be just that and nothing more. 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.

In the end, Obama’s Jewish problem proved to be no problem at all, and the story remained what it has been over the course of the past seven national elections, with Jews voting for Democratic candidates by colossal margins. In the annual survey of American Jewish opinion released in November by the American Jewish Committee, 56 percent of Jews said they were Democrats, while just 17 percent professed fealty to the Republican party. Forty-four percent were willing to identify themselves as liberal, and only 24 percent confessed to being conservative.

...

This pattern—of Republican hopes swelled by apparent Jewish concern about Democratic softness on Israel soon dashed by a savvy Democratic response—is now a recurring one. Prior to the 2004 presidential election, some Republican strategists believed that President George W. Bush was likely to outperform his Republican predecessors by receiving a Jewish vote similar to the record share (38 percent) Ronald Reagan received in 1980. In December 2001, a survey by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) went so far as to conclude that “If the election were held today . . . more Jews would vote for Bush—42 percent—than for former presidential candidate Al Gore, who received 39 percent support.”

...

Still, hope sprang eternal, albeit on a smaller scale, in the midterm election of 2006. Across the country, Republican candidates were trying to woo the Jewish vote by arguing that the Democratic party was less supportive of Israel than the GOP. The Republican Jewish Coalition was pushing this message hard, trumpeting poll data that have consistently shown Democratic voters to be more critical of and less favorably oriented toward Israel. In particular, Republicans tried to make Israel a salient issue in the Senate race in Pennsylvania. In the run-up to the election, the incumbent Republican Senator Rick Santorum—one of Israel’s most vocal supporters on Capitol Hill—had emphasized his pro-Israel record in the hope that this would help him in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But not even the large donations (by some estimates more than $2 million) Santorum received from pro-Israel sources could turn the tide. According to exit polls, only one out of five Pennsylvania Jews voted for the Republican. Santorum was simply unable to distinguish himself from his opponent, Bob Casey, Jr., who claimed to be an equally good friend to the Jewish state. In a conscious echo of Kerry in 2004, Casey praised Bush’s pro-Israel stance, and even promised he would be as strong a backer of Israel as Santorum had been.

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