Obama's problems with the Jewish vote could mean good news for McCain

The likely Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, pledges to negotiate with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who just yesterday called Israel "a stinking corpse." For twenty years he sat in the pews of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, Wright has accused the United States of sponsoring state sponsored terrorism against the Palestians. Never mind that Palestinian terror groups regularly fire missiles into Israel, and have no shame in sending suicide bombers to kill ordinary citizens. After some prodding from Tim Russert in a March Democratic debate, Obama denounced and repudiated racist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, but Obama gives the leader of the sci-fi religion undeserved respect by referring to him as "Minister Farrakhan."

Much has been made by bloggers, including this one, about Obama's ties to unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. The pair served on the board of The Woods Fund, which in 2001 gave $40,000 to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, co-founded by anti-Israel activist and Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi.

In 2000, Khalidi, then a University of Chicago professor, held a fundraiser at his home for Obama's unsuccessful run for Congress.

Former national security advisor for Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, an early Barack Obama supporter, advises the Obama campaign on foreign policy matters. He's a harsh critic, like his former boss, of Israel.

Which leads us to Carter. Asked by a reporter about Carters shameful meeting with Hamas terrorists, Obama, who was having breakfast at the time, snapped back, "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" Given a second chance to respond, the great orator followed up with "Just let me eat my waffle."

Where is the controversy about Obama's temper?

The American Thinker's Richard Baehr is among the many political analysts taking note of Obama's problems with Jewish voters--and the opportunity it gives John McCain this fall.

McCain could break the modern day GOP high water mark of 39% set by Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980, which was before Carter's venomous attitude towards the Jewish state was so evident. A shift of that magnitude could make a difference in Pennsylvania, a state Kerry won by only 2.5% in 2004, and in which Obama was soundly beaten by Clinton in the recent primary. There are over 200,000 Jewish voters in Pennsylvania.

None of this is surprising. Jews who care about Israel have many reasons to have concerns about Barack Obama, pretty much all of which have been laid out in the American Thinker in a series of exhaustively researched articles by Ed Lasky. Of course, some Jews do not care about Israel very much, and those Jews can find a comfortable home in the Democratic Party, where support for Israel is far lower than among Republicans overall in every national survey that has been taken comparing the parties on this issue.

In any case, with Obama a risk on Israel and untested in matters of national security and foreign policy, and with the Republicans offering John McCain, a long time strong supporter of the US-Israel relationship and a man, whose entire career provides a definition of the words "tested" and "experienced," it is no wonder that those Jews who choose this year to finally vote Republican will have a lot more company than they might have in the past.

The Jewish vote, which has been a loyal cog in the Democratic Party's "big tent" for decades, is in play. The post-1968 shift to the Left by the Democrats, and its stubborn pro-abortion stance, saw the Catholic vote, a reliable source of votes for the party since the 1830s, drift towards the GOP.

Cross-posted on McCain Now

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