Jewish Voters: Looking Before Leaping Into Bed With The GOP

The one group that has been suggested as a potential source of defections to the Republican column are Jewish voters. The suggestion has been made in some quarters that conservative Jewish voters were induced to vote for Gore by reason of Lieberman's presence on the ticket, but will now turn to Bush because of the Bush Administration's supposed support for Israel. Again, I am very skeptical that any potential for such a voting shift actually exists. Nevertheless, all Jewish voters should be very aware of the disastrous mistake they would be making by throwing in their lot with the extremist cabal that is the Republican Party of George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Giuliani and McCain may be the welcoming, inclusive faces that the Republicans put on display at their convention, but they are not the faces of the people wielding the levers of power in today's Republican Party. To put this in an historical context, this is not the Republican Party of Jacob Javits. This is the Republican Party of the Liberty Lobby, the John Birch Society, and the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade. This is a party that makes the deliberate and not-too-subtle gesture of designing the podium at the RNC in the shape of a cross. This is the party that seeks to have America officially declared to be a "Christian Nation." This is the party in which a Congressional candidate can blithely, and without rebuke, describe a fund-raiser for a Democratic opponent as "that Jew boy from Savannah." For an excellent compendium of recent outrages by the Republican Right along these lines, I suggest a visit to the website of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

For a particularly revealing insight into the true face of the Republican Right, consider the case of the right-wing's recent demonization of George Soros, a Jewish refugee from Communist Hungary. Soros is a billionaire currency speculator/hedge fund manager who has also become highly-involved with international philanthropy, most notably The Open Society Institute, which supports the promotion of capitalist democracy in the former Soviet bloc. In terms of domestic politics, Soros has historically supported Republicans as often as Democrats, since he finds the free-market policies of the Republicans consistent with his vision of an "open society," a belief to which Soros was drawn as a result of his studies with philosopher Karl Popper at Oxford. This year, however, Soros has been an outspoken opponent of Bush, believing that the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush Administration reflects the antithesis of a truly "open society." Soros has given substantial financial support to anti-Bush organizations such as MoveOn and Americans Coming Together (ACT).

Of course, these "527c" organizations have been driving the Republicans bonkers, simply because they have aggressively told the truth about Bush. The Republican strategy has been to attack these groups by demonizing Soros. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has accused Soros of funneling money derived from "drug groups" into ACT and MoveOn. Hastert has not found the fact that he admittedly does not have a shred of evidence to support this outrageous allegation to be any impediment to his continuing assertion of the charge. Telling the truth is one of those "nuances" that today's Republican Party "does not do."

Tellingly, Hastert's vicious defamation of Soros has been coordinated with an even more ugly attack coming from the Right. Fox News commentator Tony Blankley described Soros as a "left wing crank" and -- appropos of nothing except the disgusting blood libel that it is -- "a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust." Rather than castigating Blankley for his lament that Hitler did not do a thorough enough job, Fox News superstar Sean Hannity simply said, "Tony, I think you're right." Apparently, Fox News' idea of being "fair and balanced" means balancing criticism of MoveOn with criticism of Hitler for not killing every Jew. Lest anyone have any doubts about who Blankley is and whom he represents, Blankely is the former top aide to Newt Gingrich who now works as the editorial page editor for Rev. Moon's Washington Times.

Regrettably, this is not even the worst of the Republican Right's treatment of Soros. A website called gopusa.com recently posted an article entitled "Satan Lives in George Soros." This revealing piece described Soros as a "descendant of Shylock" and "the embodiment of the merchant from Venice." (Yes, that's what it said; I guess the author's favorite play is "Eleventh Night.")

I know MoveOn got into trouble for running an ad comparing Bush to Hitler. I don't think it's necessary to say a word in order to draw any comparisons. Just let the Republican Right go on speaking for itself.