JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Political tidbits: Joe the Plumber takes on the Middle East and Shepard Smith is appalled

By Eric Fingerhut · October 29, 2008

• A Jewish senior citizen told “Joe the Plumber” at a campaign appearance Tuesday that the election of Obama would bring “death to Israel” – and Joe agreed. Later, asked by Fox News’ Shepard Smith whether he thinks John McCain agrees with him, Joe said he had no idea and it was his “personal opinion” that he’d come up with by “looking into different facts” – and that people shouldn’t listen to his opinion anyway. Smith is so appalled after the interview that he mutters “it just gets frightening sometimes” and states that Obama “has said and demonstrated repeatedly that Israel will always be a friend of the United States.” The Huffington Post has the video. The McCain campaign doesn’t seem nearly as disgusted, saying Joe is offering “penetrating and clear analysis.”
  
• David Gelernter writes in the Weekly Standard that the best word to describe John McCain is a Hebrew one – tsaddik, “a man of such nobility and moral substance that he approaches holiness.”
  
• The Huffington Post has the details on a Florida GOP mailer that calls Obama “no friend of Israel.”
• Photos of Obama with leaders of all three of Israel’s major political parties are featured on a mailer the Obama-Biden campaign is sending out in Florida, reports Lynn Sweet in the Chicago Sun-Times.
  
• Under the headline “How the GOP Scares Jews,” Slate examines the e-mail the Pennsylvania GOP sent out to Jewish voters suggesting that an Obama win could bring a second Holocaust.
  
• Michael Freund of the Jerusalem Post is disturbed that Israel’s foes are all rooting for Obama.
• Raphael Sonenshein speculates why recent polls are showing Jewish voters moving to Obama – and says Sarah Palin’s failure to name a single newspaper she reads couldn’t have helped the Republican ticket, in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.
  
• A liberal pro-choice Jewish woman for McCain explains her reasons, at the American Thinker.
• “From Iran Agression to U.S. Recession: The Challenges Ahead”: Mona Charen, David Horowitz, Cliff May, Daniel Pipes and Michael Medved discuss the campaign’s issues, from a conservative perspective, in a forum sponsored by the Jewish Policy Center.
• Does the voiceover on this McCain ad about Obama and Iran sound “suspiciously Jewish,” Jeffrey Goldberg wonders at The Atlantic.
• Sen. John Cornyn’s campaign manager calls Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) “a nut.” His Democratic opponent Dennis Shulman’s daughter, a Capitol Hill aide, gets it on tape, according to The Hill (Fourth item down).
  
• John and Cindy McCain photographed with a McCippah.

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Checking the footnotes

By Eric Fingerhut · October 28, 2008

It’s the last week of a very long campaign, so nothing can go unanswered – even an ad’s footnotes.

The Republican Jewish Coalition on Tuesday released the last in its controversial series of advertisements attacking Barack Obama for his foreign policy views and advisers, which will appearing in Jewish newspapers later this week. The ad was essentially a round-up of the “greatest hits” from the previous eight ads, asking “Concerned about Barack Obama? You should be,” calling the Democratic presidential nominee “dangerously naive,” and charging that “history has shown that a naive and weak foreign policy has resulted in tragic outcomes for the Jewish people.”

But what caught the National Jewish Democratic Council’s eye was the first footnote in the ad (which has since been corrected). In backing up the assertion that Obama opposed legislation labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organziation, it cited an article from the Annenberg Institute’s FactCheck.org entitled “McCain misrepresents Obama’s stand on naming Revolutionary Guard as terrorists.”

The RJC claim in the ad is accurate – Obama did vote against the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which would have designated the Iran Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group. The Factcheck.org article, though, points out that Obama has said he does favor designating the IRGC as a terrorist group – and supported another piece of legislation that would have done so – but felt the Kyl-Lieberman bill was “saber-rattling” against Iran.

“Oops," said Brooks when the mistake was pointed out to him Tuesday afternoon. He said it was a simple “clerical error” that “doesn’t change the underlying facts” on the issue. The RJC does “comprehensive research” on both sides of the positions it takes, he said, and the citations got switched. Less than two hours after he spoke to JTA about it, the ad posted on the RJC’s Website had already been corrected.

Meanwhile, the NJDC, which called the RJC “remarkably sloppy,” has directly responded to the RJC with its final ad of the election cycle. Entitled, “The Facts about the Republican Jewish Coalition’s dishonest campaign,” the advertisement responds directly with “the truth” to RJC ads which it says falsely attacked Obama’s positions on the IRGC and Jerusalem – and concludes with the tagline “The RJC Should Be Ashamed.”

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Political tidbits: Burns likes Obama’s stance on Iran, Fleischer calls Obama new Carter (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 28, 2008

• Former Bush administration official Nicholas Burns says Barack Obama is right: The United States should talk to adversaries like Iran, in Newsweek.
  
• Former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer calls Barack Obama “the Jimmy Carter of the 21st century” and brings up Jeremiah Wright when talking to Jewish voters in Las Vegas, reports the Wall Street Journal.
• In Israel, boxing promoter and Israel supporter Don King endorses Obama because he’ll speak softly but carry a big stick, according to the Jerusalem Post.
  
• The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg rips the “Jewish extremists” behind the distribution of the film “Obsession” in swing states.
• Stop using Hitler “as a political tool,” writes Brad Hirschfield on Beliefnet, in a response to that Pennsylvania e-mail.
  
• George Costanza – actually, Jason Alexander – campaigns for Obama in South Florida, writes the Huffington Post.
• Jewish Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R) is on the campaign trail too, for McCain, reports the Honolulu Advertiser.
• The Christian Science Monitor reports that Israelis are “uneasy” at the prospect of an Obama election.
• Young non-Orthodox Jews don’t give Israel high priority when voting for president, according to a new study reported in the Jerusalem Post.
  
• Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) conviction yesterday means Ethan Berkowitz’s chances in his race against longtime incumbent Republican Don Young, just got better. Here’s the New York Times noting Republicans bailing out on Young, who is implicated in the same scandal as Stevens.
• The New Republic wonders about the National Republican Sentorial Committee’s “Sex-and-Al Franken Obsession.” And even Norm Coleman says he was “astonished” by the comic-book style mailer and that any more copies should be collected and destroyed.



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Political tidbits: Gallup poll reactions, Palin wig big in Brooklyn

By Eric Fingerhut · October 24, 2008

• A McCain supporter changes his mind in the voting booth and casts his ballot for Obama after talking to a group of Jewish women who convince him how historic Obama’s election would be. He also loans them his Dale Earnhardt jacket so they can cover up their Obama shirts and vote, according to Politico.
• Looking at yesterday’s Gallup poll, Shmuel Rosner, in Commentary, analyzes why Obama has gained ground in the Jewish community. Meanwhile, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald claims that Obama’s Jewish problem was a “baseless myth.”
• Should the Great Schlep have gone to Hillels? Jacques Berlinerblau wonders after noting that the Gallup poll found older Jews support Obama in slightly bigger numbers than younger Jews.
• Did Republicans, as Colin Powell charged on “Meet the Press,” spread the “Obama is a Muslim” rumor? Steven Waldman looks into that question in the Wall Street Journal, and finds that while John McCain is innocent, others aren’t.
  
• Hilary Leila Krieger looks at Obama’s Jewish political connections in the Jerusalem Post.
• Dennis Ross talks to Haaretz about being a surrogate for Obama in Florida.
• Just like in their television ad, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s new newspaper ad uses Hillary Clinton to attack Barack Obama, comparing Clinton and John McCain’s positions to the Democratic nominee’s stances on three issues and finding Obama the odd man out.
• The NJDC’s Aaron Keyak notes on the Huffington Post that Sarah Palin was campaigning with the senator who blocked a bill tightening sanctions on Iran.
• Jerry Stiller, Rhea Pearlman, Carl Reiner, Danny DeVito: They’re all old sitcom stars, and they’ve all cut pro-Obama ads for the Jewish Alliance for Change.
  
• Surrogates for the candidates debate at Jewish forums in Philadelphia and Palm Beach County.
  
• A London writer spends some time with some New Jersey Obama supporters who are worried the news is too good for their candidate.
• The Sarah Palin wig is a big hit in Brooklyn among Orthodox women, according to the New York Daily News.

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Political tidbits: Obama up big among Fla. Jews, Shulman gaining on Garrett? (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 23, 2008

• Did the Great Schlep work? A new Quinnipiac poll has Florida Jews going 77-20 for Obama. That number would put Obama in line with Jewish support of the Democratic candidate in the last few presidential elections – and that’s in a state where a lot of resistance to Obama among Jewish voters had been reported a couple months ago. UPDATE: According to the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, the Jewish sample in the poll was 87 people, or 6 percent, which gives it a sizable margin of error of plus or minus 10.5 percent.
• “Blind Rabbi” Dennis Shulman and incumbent Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) have their first debate, and it’s not friendly. The candidates clashed over Israel and health care, reports the New Jersey Jewish News.
• Meanwhile, Politico speculates that the GOP is worried about losing Garrett’s seat, although a party spokeswoman denies it. For his part, Garrett just started running a television ad calling Shulman “too extreme for New Jersey” and sent out a mailer accusing Shulman of supporting “talking to terrorists.”
  Shulman’s campaign responded by calling Garrett “desperate” and comparing him to Karl Rove and Michelle Bachmann
  
• The head of Vote From Israel claims the deciding votes in a close presidential election could come from the 42,000 U.S. voters living in the Jewish state, reports the Jerusalem Post.
• Some Jewish Democrats complain to the Forward that the Conference of Presidents circulated invitations to John McCain’s “tele-town hall” meeting on Sunday.
  
• Howard Fineman blogs at Newsweek that Jewish donors frightened by Sarah Palin were one reason Barack Obama raised so much money in September.
• If John McCain won’t bring up Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue, then Jonathan Mark of The Jewish Week doesn’t trust McCain to speak out against anti-Semitism as president.
  
• The economic crisis is dampening enthusiasm for McCain among the Russian Jewish community, reports The Jewish Week.
• And some in the Jewish community see the economic crisis forcing increased engagement with Iran under a new president, writes Jim Besser in The Jewish Week.
• The Forward reports on the Obama campaign’s courting of the Brooklyn Orthodox community at a sukkah in Williamsburg.
  
• Whitefish salad, nova, bagels, latkes and a couple black and white cookies were on the menu when Obama visited a South Florida deli with Reps. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) on Tuesday afternoon, reports Jake Tapper at ABC News.
• How does an editor decide whether to publish a letter that contains false information about the presidential candidates? The Jewish Week’s Gary Rosenblatt explores that issue.
  
• Larry Yudelson, in the Jerusalem Post, finds problems in McCain’s repetition of the phrase “Judeo-Christian values.”
• Eitan Haber, in YNet, is not excited, to say the least, about a Barack Obama presidency and it implications for Israel.
  
• Obama adviser Dan Kurtzer is optimistic about Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in an Obama presidency, according to the New Jersey Jewish News.
  
• Alan Dershowitz’s research assistant objects to the Harvard law professor’s endorsement of Obama, in the Jerusalem Post.
• Washington Jewish Week talks to some young Jews who made The Great Schlep.
• Could Wyoming have a Jewish member of Congress? Some polls say it’s possible, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

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JCER’s newest project, post-schlep

By Eric Fingerhut · October 20, 2008

The latest entrant in the Jewish newspaper ad wars is the Jewish Council for Education and Research. The group that came up with “The Great Schlep” is making a $30,000-40,000 ad buy in three Jewish newspapers over the next couple weeks – all six localized editions of the Jewish Journal in South Florida, as well as the Detroit Jewish News and the St. Louis Jewish Light.”

The group worked with ad hoc coalitions of supporters for some of the ads to come up with locally-driven content, said a spokeswoman for the group.

For instance, in Detroit, the ad features a quote from Obama talking about restoring “confidence in our economy” and states “Don’t be complacent. John McCain has not left Michigan” – a response to the decision of the McCain campaign earlier this month to shift resources from the state elsewhere. The St. Louis ad features a list of local Obama supporters.

The ad appearing in Florida is more provocative. Headlined “Sarah Palin: Anti-Choice Radical,” it features a photo of anti-abortion protesters laying down in a street and charges Palin wiith “carrying water” for the “Christian right” on the issue as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

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Political tidbits: Obama effigy found in Ohio, McCain townhall reaction

By Eric Fingerhut · October 20, 2008

• A man hangs an Obama effigy in his front yard – with a Star of David on the top of his head – and freely admits he doesn’t want a black man as president. The Huffington Post has the video from a local TV station in Ohio.
• John McCain isn’t going to bring up Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but won’t ask the Republican Jewish Coalition to stop putting him in their ads, according to Newsweek.
  
• McCain turned down an opportunity from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin yesterday to talk about Wright at a Jewish “tele-town hall meeting.”
• M.J. Rosenberg rips Riskin for spending years living in Israel and yet presuming to advise U.S. presidential candidates on strategy, at TPM Cafe.
• Jim Besser of The Jewish Week felt the McCain meeting seemed too staged.
• Menachem Rosensaft on McCain’s “pals” like Phil Gramm and Randy Scheunemann, in the Huffington Post.
• Here’s the National Jewish Democratic Council’s newest print ad, making the case that Obama-Biden will protect Israel and achieve energy independence.
  
• And here’s the Republican Jewish Coalition’s new television ad, using Hillary Clinton to criticize Obama for saying he’d meet with the leaders of rogue states.
  
• Every church and synagogue in the United States is going to receive the anti-radical Islam film Obsession, according to Marketwatch. It’s coming enclosed with a new right-wing, anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion publication called The Judeo-Christian View, which is backed by a couple Orthodox rabbis and charges that Obama’s support of partial-birth abortion is akin biblically to child sacrifice.
• Daniel Pipes plays the Muslim card, claiming that Obama wouldn’t get a security clearance if he becomes president.
  
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) tells CBS’s “Face The Nation” that Sarah Palin has “really disturbed” the Jewish community in Florida, according to UPI.
  
• Richard Heideman and Steve Grossman face off as surrogates for McCain and Obama in Boston, reports the Boston Globe.
  
• Adam Brickley, one of Sarah Palin’s earliest fans in the lower 48, has gone from being an evangelical Christian to a “messianic Jew,” notes the New Yorker in a Palin profile.
  
• Our daily look at the Florida Jewish vote today comes from the Chicago Tribune.
• The Jewish Press endorses John McCain.
  
• “Family Guy” briefly compared McCain and Palin to Nazis last night, according to Hollywood Today.
  
• Sarah Silverman talks to Katie Couric.

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RJC turns to TV (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 20, 2008

Voters in Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania will see this television advertisement frequently over the next two weeks. The Republican Jewish Coalition has spent more than $1 million to run it in those four swing states.

The ad uses the tag line that the RJC has used in many of its controversial print ads: “Concerned about Barack Obama’s naive foreign policy? You should be.” But the ad itself is relatively non-controversial and straightforward. It uses clips from the July 2007 debate in which Obama said “I would” meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea – and Hillary Clinton’s subsequent criticism of Obama for that statement.

UPDATE: National Jewish Democratic Council executive director Ira Forman responded that he thought the ad was “milquetoast,” and felt Colin Powell’s endorsement yesterday of Obama and his foreign policy judgment would garner more attention than the RJC ads – which he called “spitting into the wind.”

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Obama campaign says no to RJC debates

By Eric Fingerhut · October 16, 2008

Angry about the advertisements that the Republican Jewish Coalition has been running this fall, Barack Obama’s campaign has decided its representatives won’t debate officials of the RJC.

The Los Angeles Jewish Journal reports that a debate scheduled for Sunday in Van Nuys has been cancelled, and the RJC states that a Philadelphia synagogue was told that an Obama surrogate would not debate the city’s RJC director and that it needed to find an alternative.

The RJC is responding by pointing out that Obama has said he would “engage” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and yet will not “engage the RJC.” Here’s their release.

Washington, D.C. (October 15, 2008) – The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Executive Director Matt Brooks issued the following statement today:

“It has come to our attention that the Obama campaign has instituted a new policy of not debating representatives of the RJC at community candidates’ forums.  Forum organizers are being asked to provide surrogates not from the RJC.  Temple Sinai, in suburban Philadelphia, was told that Obama surrogate state Rep. Josh Shapiro would not participate with RJC Philadelphia Director Scott Feigelstein.  The synagogue was instructed to find someone else.  This is not the first time the Obama campaign has made such a demand of Jewish forum organizers.  We find it a curious paradox that Obama would engage Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad without preconditions, but the Obama campaign will not engage the RJC,” said Brooks. “Given how troubling Senator Obama’s record is on Israel, I guess he’s afraid to have a fair debate.”

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Political tidbits: Obama campaign won’t debate RJC, low turnout for the Schlep

By Eric Fingerhut · October 16, 2008

• The Obama campaign has decided its representatives won’t debate Republican Jewish Coalition officials, because they’re tired of the RJC’s negative ads, according to the L.A. Jewish Journal.
• CNN has the story of a “great schlepper” who ended up not only convincing his South Florida grandparents to support Barack Obama, but also spoke to more than 100 of their neighbors.
• Meanwhile, the London Daily Telegraph says only 200 people actually schelpped, and many found their grandparents were already supporting Obama.
  
• And some of Obama’s senior staffers are schlepping to Florida for the next few weeks – a signal the campaign thinks it can win the state, according to a Miami television station.
  
• The Jerusalem Post reports that Jesse Jackson says his comments on “Zionists” controlling American foreign policy were distorted – and that the Obama campaign has distanced itself from those remarks.
• Jewish historian Jonathan Sarna talks about the election and the Jewish vote with JUF News.
• The L.A. Jewish Journal interviews Obama’s California strategist, Mitchell Schwartz.
  
• The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg blogs that the angry crowds at McCain-Palin rallies remind him of those demonstrating against Yitzhak Rabin in the months before he was assassinated.
• Michael Oren, in Forbes, said it was “astonishing” to discover that the presidential candidates “differ significantly on virtually every issue” related to Israel, except for their “common commitment to Israel and the search for peace.”
• Newsweek’s Howard Fineman has decided the many polls of Jewish voters are wrong. How? He surveyed his high-school friends from Pittsburgh, gets a 9-1 margin for Obama and declares that non-Orthodox Jews are going to vote in much bigger numbers for the Democrat than everyone thinks.
• Campaigning for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton tells a Philadelphia JCC crowd that the economic crisis is heartbreaking, reports the AP.
• Bloomberg on the campaigns seeking American voters in Israel.
  
• Max Blumenthal and David Niewert at Salon claim Sarah Palin has ties to some radical right-wingers.
• M.J. Rosenberg wonders what Sarah Palin meant when she campaigned to be “Wasilla’s first Christian mayor” – since the incumbent was a Lutheran but his last name was Stein.
• Charley Levine, in the Jerusalem Post, would like to see a McCain-Biden ticket.
• Campaiging for John McCain, Joe Lieberman tells Ohio voters that he might even vote for Obama one day – but not this year, according to the AP. And he tells the Forward that he’s “at peace” with his decision to become an independent and back the GOP presidential candidate.
  
• More on the battle for Florida Jewish voters, from the Chicago Tribune.
• Ben Shapiro, on Townhall.com, challenges Alan Dershowitz to a debate over Dershowitz’s claim that both candidates are equal supporters of Israel.

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