This week congressional Republicans tried to put the finishing touches on a compromise version of President George W. Bush\’s giant tax cut that some Jewish leaders say could ravage a wide range of health and social service programs serving the community\’s neediest citizens.
Just when we thought it was safe to proclaim the mayoral campaign free from the kind of race-baiting that has tainted previous runs for City Hall, we get this bogus automated telephone message, falsely attributed to Republican candidate Steve Soboroff, attesting to his supposed reliance on \”Jewish money.\”
Talk to Jewish Republicans these days and you hear a palpable sense of coming out of the wilderness.
For a few strained hours last week, I was afraid we\’d be witnessing the Jewish version of Elian Gonzalez, Part II. Could Jewish blood pressure withstand the tension of the Palm Beach vote taken hostage?
In the end, the selection of the next president of the United States came down in many ways to voters in heavily Jewish South Florida.
Is there a \”Jewish stake\” in the district attorney race between two-term incumbent Gil Garcetti and head Deputy District Attorney Steve Cooley? Maybe it comes to this: How far out of step is this community going to be?
As I see it, the big problem with the political debates isn\’t, as everybody contends, the candidates; rather, it\’s the format. It\’s too polite, too genteel. You wind up with two men, who have spent months accusing each other of being treacherous fools, suddenly having to put on their company manners. They wind up acting as if they just might vote for the other guy. The whole thing is as phony as a bad amateur production; mediocre lines delivered by over-rehearsed robots who have been dressed by a wardrobe lady with way too many red neckties at her disposal.
The dust-up over Jesus Day is turning into a firestorm. Thanks to the Internet, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush cannot shake continuing criticism for the role that his religious faith might play in his presidency.
Congressional leaders, activists and religious leaders invoked biblical notions of justice to spotlight the need to bring about campaign reform, reduce poverty and end the \”failed war on drugs.\” Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) warned the packed Shadow Convention 2000 audience in downtown Los Angeles that the Democratic and Republican con-ventions are \”the worst display of money and corruption in American history.\”
Studies of electoral trends in the past two decades, polls and just plain political horse sense all point to yet another big win in the fall for the Democrats among Jewish voters in the presidential and congressional elections.
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