Jews and Republicans

I've long wondered about what I consider to be American Jews' irrational fear of Evangelical Christians (a subject I tackled here) and their hatred of George Bush. It's as if they feel that political parties are completely stagnant, with today's Republican party being identical to the Republican party in 1950. If anything, today's Republicans, who have a hankering for freedom, are much closer to the Republicans of 1860, while the hate-filled Demos of today can be more closely analogized to the Demos of the Jim Crow South in the 1950s. As this Richard Baehr article demonstrates, while the world is changing, Jews are utterly resistant even to acknowledging the change:

For Democrats, the move away from the center has meant less support for Israel than in the past. Among Republicans, on the other hand, there is now more support for Israel in Congress than existed ten years ago. Christian evangelicals, and many of the members of Congress they help elect, have become increasingly vocal supporters of Israel, though many Jews are wary of their support, because of their social policy agenda. Some Jews seem to fear posting the Ten Commandments in a courthouse or school prayer more than they do Muslims hijacking airplanes and crashing them into tall buildings. Some Jews behaved last year as if George Bush were more of an enemy and someone worth hating, than Osama Bin Laden. Intelligent writers at prestige journals like the New Republic were on the same page, writing long articles on why they hated George Bush. The reality is that one party is on the rise, the other is in decline, at all levels of government: the Presidency, the Senate, the House, governors, state legislatures. Democrats were Governors in 31 states in 1994, now 22. Democratic House members have dropped from 257 to 202. Democratic Senate members have gone from 54 to 44. Look back 30 years, and the Democratic Party's decline is more dramatic. In 1974, Democrats were Governors in 37 states, held 291 House seats, and 61 Senate seats. And of course, Democrats have won but three of the last ten presidential elections, and in each case, only when their candidate was a Southern state governor. Yet Jews voted almost 3 to 1 for the Democratic nominee John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential race, closely associating themselves with a party that appears to be in a long term decline. Much of the county has changed politically in recent decades, but not Jews. As Norman Podhoretz once wrote in Commentary, most Jews now live like Republicans, but most Jews continue to vote like lower-income Puerto Ricans.

Hat tip: Gee Dubya