Reliable votes?

For some unidentifiable reason, Jews tend to vote Democrat. This is as true today as it was 55 years ago when Truman recognized Israel against the advice of his State Department. This is also true despite the unrelenting hostility of Carter toward Israel, the bailout Nixon delivered in the Yom Kippur War, 8 years of Reagan (although four years of Bush I tempered that relationship), and 8 years of Clinton when the most frequent foreign guest to the White House was Arafat.

Now Jewish voters are presented with a choice between a president who has been one of the best friends Israel has ever had and John Kerry, who believes anti-Israel figures like Carter and James Baker III are good choices to negotiate peace in the Middle East. The New Republic calls this Kerry's Jewish Problem. Then again, as that TNR piece shows, Kerry claims he only suggested Carter as an envoy because his speechwriters put that in his speech and never took it out. Huh?

Here's Mickey Kaus, a liberal who's no fan of Kerry for many reasons, including the ones here:

[I]s that how the Kerry presidency will work? I always thought speechwriters had power!... But wait a minute: If Kerry instructed his aides to remove Carter's name as a possible envoy from the speech, then why did he go ahead and meet with Carter just because the to-be-corrected draft of the speech said he'd met with him? ... That's where his story falls completely to the ground!



Read the whole Kausfile on this.