Bush's New Best Friends
BARNES, FRED
Bush's New Best Friends Many of them are Jewish. BY FRED BARNES BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, the former Israeli prime minister, insists President Bush is the best friend Israel ever had in the White...
...All this gives Republicans a political opening, but no more than that...
...Nonetheless, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle overrode White House objections and pushed a mildly pro-Israel resolution through the Senate last week...
...His hold on Jewish voters is fragile...
...But only 17 percent of Jewish voters in that poll identified themselves as Republicans (54 percent were Democrats...
...No Republican president in the past half century has been this popular among Jews...
...The possibility of Republican gains is not a new phenomenon...
...Leaders of Jewish organizations were invited to a White House screening in 2001 of Variant's War, a movie directed by Bush supporter Lionel Chetwynd about the escape of Jewish intellectuals from France during World War II...
...That's a formula for the party's presidential nominee to get less than 50 percent of the Jewish vote...
...A door's been opened...
...It will take a strong man, with a genuine love for Israel as a democracy and strategic ally, to resist...
...People are willing to look at Republicans in a way they haven't in a generation...
...Democratic strategists concede Bush should do better in 2004, but they believe support for Israel won't help many Republicans in congressional races...
...Bush won a surprising 35 percent of the Jewish electorate in 1988, but this fell to 11 percent four years later after Bush turned against the Israeli government...
...BY FRED BARNES BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, the former Israeli prime minister, insists President Bush is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House...
...says Luntz...
...Bob Dole won 16 percent in 1996, Bush 19 percent in 2000...
...In 1984, Reagan dipped to 31 percent as the rise of the Christian Right chilled Jewish voters...
...And now that he's caught up in peace negotiations, nearly everyone—the media, Europeans, Arab leaders, his own secretary of state, Colin Powell—will demand that he do exactly that...
...The worst-case scenario for Democrats in 2004...
...The RJC took a poll last November that showed Bush beating Al Gore, 42 percent to 39 percent, if the presidential race were rerun...
...Democratic presidential candidates normally get 65 percent to 80 percent of the Jewish vote...
...If the president were to turn sharply in his Middle East policy and exert prolonged pressure on Israel for concessions to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians, he'd suffer the fate of his father...
...In 2000, Bush strategists were more interested in attracting the Arab-American vote, and they still seem to be...
...And it's partly because Jews are only 4 percent of the national vote...
...As eager as the Bush White House is to expand the Republican base, it's done little to woo Jewish voters...
...Did you ever think there'd come a time when Tom DeLay was more pro-Israel than the average rabbi in the average synagogue...
...And why not...
...For another, Democrats will make sure social issues like abortion are played up...
...Jewish women are perhaps the most ardently pro-choice of any voting group...
...Also, Jewish apprehension about the Christian Right has been trumped by the alliance of religious conservatives and Jews in support of Israel...
...that it's okay to be a Republican in the synagogue...
...The surge of proBush sentiment has thrilled Jewish Republicans to the point of giddiness...
...What's driving Jews to Bush and the GOP, Brooks argues, is "the political equivalent of the perfect storm" since September 11...
...Even a strong shift in 2004 probably wouldn't be pivotal in Bush's reelection, except perhaps in Florida...
...But that's about it: no Bush appearance before a large Jewish gathering, no series of speeches by administration officials to Jewish groups around the country...
...Bush calls Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon a "man of peace," says he won't allow Israel to be "crushed," and seems to have Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat pegged as a menace to civilization...
...For one thing, there won't be many cases—maybe none—in which a pro-Israel Republican is running against an anti-Israel Democrat in a state or district with a significant Jewish vote...
...That's putting it mildly...
...And that includes Ronald Reagan, who got 39 percent of the Jewish vote in 1980, and Dwight Eisenhower, who won 40 percent in 1952...
...For example, the head of B'nai B'rith International, Richard D. Heideman, told Tom Edsall of the Washington Post he's always been a Democrat but expects to vote for Bush in 2004...
...Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), says it may no longer be true that Jews live like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans...
...Any Jewish drift to Bush and the GOP, says the leader of a national Jewish organization, is "a work in progress...
...The problem is there's no hard data to confirm either a rush of Jews to Bush or a Jewish political realignment...
...Pollster Frank Luntz says, "This is the first time in my lifetime Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...But Reagan held Jimmy Carter to 45 percent in 1980 (John Anderson won 15 percent), raising the prospect of a Jewish realignment...
...The Mideast and the war on terrorism are the dominant issues and Israel-hating Al Sharpton is a major player in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination...
...Two evangelical Christians, Gary Bauer and Janet Parshall, spoke at the pro-Israel rally...
...There hasn't been a national election to test either notion...
...And in case anyone thought he'd foolishly gotten carried away the first time he said it—while addressing the pro-Israel rally on the Capitol grounds—he repeated it at a gathering in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and yet again on television...
...This is partly out of fear of being accused of pandering, though Bush's support for Israel appears heartfelt...
...Twice thwarted, a Jewish realignment is not a big worry of Democrats...
...There's a ton of anecdotal evidence of Bush's popularity among Jews...
...So not surprisingly, Bush "has gained a great deal of support in the jewish community," says Malcolm Hoen-lein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations...
...Nor does the president use code words for moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians like "cycle of violence" or euphemisms for American pressure on Israel such as "engagement...
...Bush has emerged as the lone defender of Israel among major world leaders...
...Nothing is guaranteed in politics, least of all a substantial Jewish vote for Bush in 2004...
...Meanwhile, Democratic tardiness in defending Israel has drawn a stark contrast with noisy backing by Republicans and conservatives of Israel's foray into the West Bank...
...Brooks believes that since September 11—all the more since Palestinian suicide bombers provoked an Israeli military invasion of the West Bank on March 29—the Jewish community is undergoing "a fundamental shift towards the Republican party...
...Then George H.W...
...Twice before, in 1980 and 1988, there were false starts...
...And the social issues that cause many Jews to vote Democratic—abortion, guns, school prayer—are dormant at the moment...
Vol. 7 • May 2002 • No. 34
