Jewish Republicans may face a dilemma in November unimaginable just a year ago: loyalty to party or community.
Donald Trump’s surging candidacy has created deep anxiety among Jewish Republicans, some of whom are so unnerved they are prepared to vote for Hillary Clinton if Trump wins the nomination. Yet others say that despite Trump’s promise to be “neutral” on Israel and his support from white supremacists, conservative principles demand deference to the eventual nominee.
“As boorish as he is, as occasionally foolish as he is, and how vituperative he can be, I would vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton any day,” said Ari Fleischer, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
For some Jewish conservatives, Trump is too unpalatable to support. He has refused to side unequivocally with Israel, declining at a recent campaign event to pin blame for the Middle East conflict on either Israel or the Palestinians, saying instead that he wished to remain “neutral.” His conservative credentials are shaky — he has favored abortion rights and argued for the imposition of tariffs, which is anathema to the business community. And his rhetoric has won support from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and National of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan.
In an editorial this week, William Kristol, the neoconservative scion who runs the Weekly Standard, said the party must be saved from “a charlatan and a demagogue.” The Emergency Committee for Israel, which Kristol founded, also released an ad featuring clips of Trump speaking favorably of Syrian President Bashar Assad, former Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi and Saddam Hussein.
“For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Robert Kagan, a veteran of the Reagan State Department and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote last week in a widely shared Washington Post op-ed. “The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.”
Jonathan Tobin, the online editor at Commentary, a conservative magazine that does not take positions on candidates, said he was doubtful Trump would garner much support from Jewish Republicans.
“There are the Jewish Republicans who are focused on foreign policy, on economic policy — the sense among that group is that Trump doesn’t speak for them,” Tobin said. “And the question is, if he is the nominee — and right now it looks like it — will they vote for him? And I suspect a lot won’t.”
Trump last week brusquely disavowed Duke at a news conference. But in an interview Feb. 28 on CNN, he professed not to know who the former KKK leader was. Then Trump again disavowed Duke on Twitter after the interview aired, chalking up the discrepancy to a faulty earpiece. The following day, the Anti-Defamation League issued a list of extremists that candidates were advised to steer clear of, with Duke’s name at the top of the list.
As much as Trump repels some Jewish Republicans, he could still command their support, if only because expectations of party loyalty run so deep. Fred Zeidman, a Houston businessman who supported former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said propriety demanded deference to the winner.
“I won’t say anything negative about Donald Trump any more than other [Republican] candidates,” Zeidman said. “I wish he had a different approach, but in America you get to vote, and if most Republicans want to get Donald Trump, that’s what it is. And the fact of the matter is we have to go on to defeat the Democratic candidate.”
Norm Coleman, a former Republican senator from Minnesota who backs Rubio, said the fight was not over.
“I won’t speak about the unspeakable, and I still believe that my party is not going to nominate Donald Trump,” Coleman said. “The prospect of Trump leading our party is deeply troubling. It would be destructive of the party and would harm the nation, and give us four more years of Clinton-Obama foreign policy, which has gravely weakened us in the world and undermined our allies.”