It’s never been easy for Jewish Republicans. Jews have broken overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates since Woodrow Wilson. Despite rising American Jewish affluence, usually a harbinger of conservative voting patterns, a plurality of the community self-defines as liberal.
Republican Jews have poured millions into upping their share of the Jewish vote in recent elections, portraying the GOP as the pro-Israel party and telling largely affluent Jewish Americans to vote their economic self-interest. The needle has moved only a little, despite those efforts: 80 percent of Jews voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, 79 percent voted for Al Gore in 2000 and 74 percent voted for Barack Obama in 2008.
Organizations like the Republican Jewish Coalition have kept pushing despite it all, doubling down on the Israel case at their national convention in Cleveland last month. Donald Trump, Mike Pence and a handful of other speakers included lines in support of Israel in their speeches and drew loud applause. Obama’s support of the Iran nuclear deal, anathema to the Israeli government, was a nightly punching bag.
Dozens of delegates said that the main reason Jews should vote Trump is that he’s better on Israel than his opponent, Hillary Clinton. The Republican platform swung right on Israel, eliminating the long-held bipartisan consensus supporting the two-state solution, and rejecting the United States’ right to dictate terms on Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Even so, Republican Jewish uneasiness showed at the convention. Big-name Jewish donors declined to attend. Republican Jews, from journalists Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin to former Republican operatives like Noam Neusner and David Frum, oppose Trump. The Republican Jewish Coalition held no events that were open to the media, a departure from previous conventions.
Much of this ambivalence has to do with Trump’s string of statements insulting minorities, including Jews. It’s a point Democrats stressed every day of their confab a week later in Philadelphia. A video aired on the first night of the Democratic convention featuring Trump’s retweet of an image widely called anti-Semitic. The convention’s explicit message was that anyone who cares about safeguarding minority rights has to vote for Clinton.
The first night of the Democratic National Convention featured a string of Jewish public figures — Sarah Silverman and Minnesota Sen. Al Franken among them — and it ended with a keynote speech by Bernie Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win a major party primary. Jewish entertainers, activists and politicians peppered every night’s roster, from singer Paul Simon to California Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Criticism of Israel was a recurring feature among delegates and protesters in Philadelphia, however, a point the RJC pressed in an ad released last week calling the Democratic Party “stridently anti-Israel.” Many Sanders supporters wore pro-Palestinian stickers, and a few advocated changing the United States’ historically pro-Israel policy. On July 27, a night devoted largely to national security, no one mentioned the U.S. alliance with Israel, and there was full-throated support for the Iran deal throughout the convention. At one point, protesters outside the convention burned an Israeli flag.
But in the end, the party could point to the ways it shored up its traditional pro-Israel wing. The Democratic platform committee rejected an effort to even mention settlements and occupation in its section on Israel. Like Trump, Clinton threw a shout-out to Israel’s security into her acceptance speech, and didn’t mention Palestinians. Gen. John Allen, the former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, gave a convention speech in support of Clinton that echoed neoconservative rhetoric, which tends to be forcefully pro-Israel. Even Bill Clinton got into the act, sporting a Hebrew “Hillary” button during Obama’s July 27 speech.
It could be that, in future election cycles, discord over Israel will drive more Jews to the Republican Party. If Sanders delegates become the new Democratic mainstream, the party could gravitate away from its pro-Israel stance.