Israel Matzav

Could Romney cause a tectonic shift in the Jewish vote

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Rafael Medoff compares Mitt Romney's pitch for the Jewish vote - which will be on display in Jerusalem over the weekend - to other pitches for that vote, including one in the 1940's involving a man named Netanyahu (Hat Tip: Soccer Dad).

Mr. Romney's gambit comes right out of his opponent's playbook. In 2008 Mr. Obama went overseas to impress voters back home, staging a dramatic speech in Germany to underscore his claim that electing him would improve America's standing abroad.

The Republicans do not need to win a majority of the Jewish vote—something that hasn't happened since 1920. Even a significant reduction of the Jewish vote for Obama would likely have major impact, especially in a key state such as Florida, which George W. Bush won in 2000 by just 537 votes. Some 640,000 Jews reside in the Sunshine State, and they care deeply about Israel.

GOP efforts to wean Jews away from the Democrats are not new. They date to the 1940s and, interestingly enough, involved a young Zionist activist named Benzion Netanyahu—the father of Israel's current prime minister.

That spring, there was widespread dissatisfaction in the Jewish community over President Franklin Roosevelt's failure to rescue Jews from the Holocaust and to support the creation of a Jewish state. Netanyahu, then the leader of a small Zionist group in New York, cultivated relationships with former President Herbert Hoover and other leading GOP figures and urged them to include a pro-Zionist plank in the 1944 GOP platform.

Neither party had ever officially endorsed a Jewish state. The GOP became the first. It called for opening British-controlled Palestine to Jews fleeing the Holocaust and the creation of a "free and democratic" Jewish homeland there. That forced the Democrats to adopt an almost identical plank. For the first time in American history, the two parties treated Jewish votes as something that was up for grabs, and openly competed for them.

Thus was born the concept of "the Jewish vote." Bipartisan support for the State of Israel, established in 1948, soon followed.

Read the whole thing.

Looking back, one might wonder why the shift in the Jewish vote in the 1980 election was not maintained. There are two answers. One is that Independent John Anderson got a big chunk of the vote, so it was clearly a vote against Carter and not a vote for Reagan. Second, and more significantly, Carter's hostility to Israel was personal. Obama's hostility toward Israel reflects the Democratic rank and file, which is polarizingly leftist and anti-Israel these days. If Romney makes a significant breakthrough on the Jewish vote in 2012, it has a chance of sticking.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, Jewish vote, Mitt Romney

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:24 AM