Romney LOST the American JEWISH VOTE by Picking Paul Ryan [View all]

[Segami]

He forfeited any real chance of winning American Jewish voters
when he chose Ryan, says Peter Beinart.




Maybe Mitt Romney should have saved the airfare. Sure, July’s Israel trip helped him with his Jewish donors and perhaps with some Christian evangelicals. But if it bought him any good will among Jewish voters, he’s just given it back—and then some—by selecting Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.



To read the press, you’d think Israel drives the American Jewish vote. That’s a myth. An October 2008 poll by Steven M. Cohen, Sam Abrams, and Judith Veinstein found that only 15 percent of American Jews ranked Israel as one of their three top voting issues. This March, when the American Jewish Committee asked American Jews what most influences their presidential vote, only 6 percent answered “Israel,” with another 4 percent citing “Iran’s nuclear program.”



So what do American Jews vote on? The economy, of course. According to the AJC poll, it registered almost five times the number of first-place votes as did Israel. Second, with more than three times the number, was health care. Indeed, while among Americans as a whole health care has far less salience than does the economy, among Jews the margin between the two is smaller. One reason may be that Jews are simply older. As the University of Miami’s Ira Sheskin points out, 16 percent of American Jews are above the age of 65 compared to 13 percent of Americans as a whole. When it comes to health care, Jews are also big fans of government spending. According “Jewish Distinctiveness in America,” a detailed 2005 study for the AJC, Jews were more supportive than any other religious group of government health-care spending and more supportive than any ethnic or racial group except African-Americans.



Another driver of the Jewish vote is fear of the Christian right. Although the percentage of American Jews who cite abortion or separation of church and state as their top voting issue is low—a combined 7 percent, according to the AJC poll—those Jews who do care about cultural issues lean massively to the left. According to the 2005 “Jewish distinctiveness,” study, Jews are the most pro-choice ethnic or religious group in America, by far. Almost 80 percent of American Jews think it’s fine for a woman to have an abortion for any reason, which is close to twice the percentage for Americans as a whole. Jews are also the religious and ethnic group most supportive of giving birth control to teenagers and most hostile to school prayer. And this cultural liberalism produces deep hostility to the Christian right. According to a 2012 study by the Public Religion Research Institute, American Jews feel almost twice as sympathetic to American Muslims as they do toward the Christian right.







cont'


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/14/romney-lost-the-american-jewish-vote-by-picking-paul-ryan.html