Chemi Shalev writes: although Republicans are trying to make you believe that the sky is the limit as far as their share of the 2012 Jewish vote is concerned, most of the people that I talk to agree that if Romney gets 40 per cent of the Jewish vote, and thus emulates Ronald Reagan’s 39% share in 1980 or Dwight Eisenhower’s 40% support in 1956 – he will be able to boast of a historic achievement which may indeed be but a precursor to bigger and better things for the Republicans in the future. In a pinch, and on the yet-to-be proven assumption that a race between Romney and President Obama would be a close one, such a proportion of the Jewish vote may very well put Romney over the top in a state such as Florida, as many analysts have already noted, which may ensure the presidency for the Republican Party.
Romney’s moderate positions, his successful business background and his East Coast credentials play a major role in making Jews feel more comfortable with him than with other Republican candidates, as Nathan Guttmann reported in the Forward last month. An American Jewish Committee poll conducted in September already gave Romney 32% of the Jewish vote – more than any other candidate – compared to Obama’s 50%, and 18% that were undecided.
A coalition comprised of the 22% of Jewish voters who preferred John McCain over Obama in 2008, buttressed by the ever-growing number of newly-eligible Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox voters – who will come out to vote “even twice or thrice” if their Rebbe so orders it, as every Israeli knows – complemented by substantial numbers of Jewish professionals and business people who have despaired of Obama’s economic performance and reinforced by those Jews who have been driven crazy by what they perceive as Obama’s anti-Israeli animus – all of these could significantly bolster the Republican Jewish vote on November 6, 2012, especially, or perhaps only, if Romney is the candidate.
But the most important factor working in Romney’s favor, from a Jewish point of view, is the one that is his Achilles’ heel in the internal Republican contest – the disaffection towards him exhibited by ultra-conservatives, evangelicals and Tea Party types. All the so-called “non-Romneys” that keep popping up in the race – first Michele Bachman, then Rick Perry, then Herman Cain and now Newt Gingrich – are supported by the kind of groups that make most mainstream American Jews squirm and stay Democrat, and this includes the staunchly pro-Israeli Christian evangelicals.
And Romney has two other, possibly relevant personal tidbits in his personal biography: first, he is the son of Michigan governor George Romney, who was a leading Republican moderate and whose close friend and later campaign treasurer was Max Fisher, the late and great Jewish Republican macher, who moved from Romney’s failed presidential campaign in 1968 to that of the eventual victor Richard Nixon and from there to a position of unparalleled political sway. Secondly, it is not widely known that Romney knows Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from the late 1970’s, when most Israelis hadn’t heard of him yet, when both were employed by the Boston Consulting Group. And according to published press reports, it was Romney who introduced the future prime minister to Fleur Cates, who went on to become Netanyahu’s second wife.
(Read More at Haaretz)
