Jewish Voters May Be Wary of Palin

View from a booth:

I can tell you that this is one Jewish voter who is wary of Sarah Palin, at least in a political sense. I only hope that Penthouse offers her an island in Dubai or something in exchange for a nude photo shoot. I'd pay money to see that, but she will not get my vote, regardless of how much skin she shows. We are living in a "B" movie.

Randy Shiner



Jewish voters may be wary of Palin
By: Ben Smith
September 3, 2008 11:28 AM EST
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13098.html

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Barack Obama has struggled for 18 months to lock down the support of a traditionally Democratic group, Jewish voters.

In the past week, John McCain may have helped Obama with his Jewish
problem by choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

McCain and Obama are battling over a portion of the Jewish community: older, conservative Democrats, largely in South Florida, some of whom backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. McCain’s secular, hawkish credentials appeal to many in that group, who are skeptical of Obama’s relatively short record and have been deluged with rumors about his pro-Palestinian leanings.

But Democrats hope Palin’s social conservatism, her paper-thin record on Israel, and — perhaps most importantly — her cultural roots in evangelical Christianity may be a major turnoff to Jewish voters, just as Republicans have tried to reach women disappointed that Obama didn’t choose Hillary Clinton, Democrats have already begun to to capitalize on the choice of Palin — over Jewish Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman — in South Florida and elsewhere. A prominent Obama backer, Florida Rep. Robert Wexler, has attacked Palin for appearing at a 1999 event with Pat Buchanan — who has attacked the influence of the Israeli lobby in America. And the same factors that are rallying the evangelical base to Palin may push away the Jews.

“There is almost always an inverse proportion between a candidate's popularity among conservative Christians and secular Jews,” said Jeff Ballabon, a Republican lobbyist long active in Jewish politics who supports McCain.

An illustration of that gap came just two weeks ago, when Palin’s church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus.

Palin’s pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church’s website
http://wasillabible.org/sermons.htm.

“He’s a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism,” Kroon said. Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish. “The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality,” he said.

Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report
http://www.adl.org/special_reports/jews4jesus/jews4jesus.asp
of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”
Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against
attributing Brickner’s views to her.

The executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira
Forman, cited the “cultural distance” between Palin and almost all
American Jews. “She’s totally out of step with the American Jewish community,” he said. “She is against reproductive freedom – even against abortion in the case of rape and incest. She has said that climate change is not man-made. She has said that she would favor teaching creationism in the schools. These are all way, way, way
outside the mainstream.”

Huffington Post on Tuesday posted http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html portions of Palin speaking at her former church, a politically conservative Assemblies of God congregation, in which she suggested that an Alaska pipeline plan reflects God’s will.

A spokesman for McCain and Palin, Michael Goldfarb, dismissed the notion that Palin would bring a Jewish problem. “If this is going to be about who was at church on the day of which sermon, that’s not going to be an argument that the Obama campaign is going to win,” he said, a reference to Obama’s controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. “This woman has been on the national stage for all of four days – of course it’s going to take some time for people to get a sense of what her views are on some things,” Goldfarb said. “Once she’s had a chance to make her positions clear on these issues, the Jewish community is going to be very, very comfortable with her.”

In the meantime, however, there’s simply little information availableabout Palin’s views. Two of Palin’s prominent Alaska Jewish allies, Rabbi Joseph Greenberg and businessman Terry Gorlick, told Politico they consider her a friend of the Jews. But they said they’d never heard her discuss Middle East policy in detail and that she’d never visited Israel, though they cited a boilerplate Alaska-Israel friendship resolution she signed.

Her thin record was underscored when the staunchly loyal Republican Jewish Coalition e-mailed its members evidence of her support for Israel: a video in which a small Israeli flag can be seen poking out from behind a drape.

"I think it speaks volumes that she keeps an Israeli flag on the wall of her office," the group's executive director, Matt Brooks, told Politico in an e-mail. "It clearly shows what's in her heart.”

Obama’s Jewish allies, meanwhile, are doing their best to fill that gap with unsettling information, an effort that in some ways mirrors the overt and covert campaigns against Obama in that community.

“My constituents are bewildered by Senator McCain’s pick and they just don’t understand it,” said Wexler, the Florida Democrat, citing the report that Palin had gone to a Buchanan event, and Buchanan’s “frightening views.”

Also Tuesday, a new Jewish Democratic group, JewsVote.org, sent out an email under the heading “Who is Sarah Palin?” an echo of conspiratorial anti-Obama emails that have criss-crossed the Jewish community.

“Given her record as a hard-right Christian conservative, her embrace of Pat Buchanan, her praise of Ron Paul, and her lack of credentials on foreign affairs, it is likely that her selection would raise serious red flags about the McCain/Palin ticket among Jewish swing voters,” they wrote, asking their members to send out their own anti-Palin emails.

McCain aide Goldfarb called the email “unbelievably cynical—fighting smears with smears.” Gallup and other polls conducted over the summer showed Obama beating McCain by a roughly two-to-one margin among Jewish voters - a comfortable lead, but narrower than John Kerry's and Al Gore's wins among Jewish voters in the last two elections.

Tuesday, both sides scrambled to play on the changed turf of the Jewish vote. Palin, shepherded by Lieberman, introduced herself to leaders of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in St. Paul on. Tuesday.

"We had a good productive discussion on the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and we were pleased that Gov. Palin expressed her deep, personal, and lifelong commitment to the safety and well-being of Israel," AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said. “AIPAC is pleased that both parties have selected four pro-Israel candidates.”

Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), meanwhile, campaigned
through the Jewish heartland of South Florida, showing off his cultural familiarity, dropping Yiddish words into his talk to a crowd of hundreds at a retirement community.

"I want to remind those of you who don't know me — and those of you who do know me — what my record has been. It has been unstinting in the defense and support of Israel," he said.

It was a contrast Wexler said he relished.

“There’s just no relationship, there’s no comfort, there’s no
natural affinity with Palin,” he said. “There is with Joe Biden.”

© 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC