Why Most Jews Don't Seriously Consider Voting For Republicans

Not many Jews vote for right-wing political parties. Jewish families usually put a huge premium on education and equality and, let's face it, right-wing political parties couldn't exist without ignorance and bigotry. All through history, however, there have always been a minority of Jews steeped in the same kind of ignorance and prejudice that afflicts other communities. Even if Obama isn't terribly popular among Jews, the vast majority of them voted against Romney and his crackpot, extremist Party of Hatred. Most Jews-- at least outside of Israel-- have learned, and learned the hard way, that the kind of Hatred and Bigotry at the core of the Republican Party, and at the core of all fascist-oriented parties, sooner or later and always works out badly for the Jews. Obama's 70% support among Jewish voters was down 4% since he creamed McCain in 2008 but the 4% drop in the Jewish vote for Obama in the 2012 versus 2008 race is consistent with the modest percentage drop Obama experienced with several other constituencies-- including college graduates, whites, independents, voters under 30 and Catholics.

I bet you didn't know that Budapest has the second biggest synagogue in the world, the Dohány Street Synagogue, second only to Temple Emanu-El in New York City. At one point Jews made up 23% of Budapest's population. That point was just before the rise of fascism in the 20th Century, a time when the right-wing mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, nicknamed Hungary's capital Judapest. Before Hitler came to town, Hungary's homegrown fascist, Admiral Miklós Horthy, had a series of full fledged pogroms against Hungarian Jews on increasingly aggressive levels. By 1941 there were only 861,000 Jews left in Hungary, and there were massacres and widespread murders but it wasn't until German troops occupied Hungary that Horthy allowed deportation of Jews to German death camps. 437,402 Jews were deported by the Hungarians, 90% of whom died in German death camps, particularly Auschwitz. Winston Churchill was getting intelligence that led him to write to his Foreign Secretary that "There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world." Of the 861,000 Hungarian Jews in 1941, there were about 200,000 survivors by the time Horthy was saved from the Soviets by Americans, which allowed him to live out the rest of his life in luxury in Portugal (which was still a fascist dictatorship until 1974).

In case you're wondering why all the background on Hungarian Jews, there's been a little incident in Budapest recently. Hungary's third biggest political party is the Jobbik party, very much Hungary's Tea Party and widely considered neo-fascist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, although they describe themselves in a way that would make any Fox News viewer feel perfectly comfortable: "a principled, conservative and radically patriotic Christian party." The party got going in 2003 as a protest movement against-- believe it or not-- "the war against Christmas."

Earlier this month one of Jobbik's Parliamentary leaders, Márton Gyöngyösi, told the legislature it is time “to assess ... how many people of Jewish origin there are here, and especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who represent a certain national security risk.”

Jeb Bush with Republican Jew counter Fred Malek

That's why Jews tend to shy away from right-wing parties. I mean have you heard anyone talk like that since... since... since Richard Nixon hired Fred Malek as his official "Jew counter." Malek, by the way, is still an extremely powerful Republican Party operative and was National Finance Committee co-chair for John McCain in 2008. This year he ran the American Action Network, a fascist-oriented SuperPAC, which had considerably more success than Karl Rove's various PACs, money laundering operations and scam outfits did. Malek's American Action Network spent $$11,660,232 ($4 million of which was contributed, ironically, by America's top Kapo group, the Republican Jewish Coalition) on behalf of a repulsive batch of right-wing hatemongers very much like himself who are trying to win congressional races. His 4 biggest efforts were to try to reelect fanatics Jeff Denham-- successfully smearing former astronaut Jose Hernandez with $2,508,581 in patently false ads-- Chip Cravaack ($1,668,529) and Daniel "Taliban Dan" Webster ($1,119,279) and to elect John Shimkus' horrifyingly corrupt chief of staff Rodney Davis against progressive champion David Gill ($1,482,562). Other miscreants whose campaigns Malek was funneling money to included Gambino Crime Family congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm of Staten Island ($16,930), pro-rape Republican Richard Mourdock ($645,151), and deranged California wingnut Tony Strickland ($168,717), who lost.