The executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, cited the "cultural distance" between Palin and almost all American Jews.
"She's totally out of step with the American Jewish community," he said. "She is against reproductive freedom - even against abortion in the case of rape and incest. She has said that climate change is not man-made. She has said that she would favor teaching creationism in the schools. These are all way, way, way outside the mainstream."
Huffington Post on Tuesday posted portions of Palin speaking at her former church, a politically conservative Assemblies of God congregation, in which she suggested that an Alaska pipeline plan reflects God's will.
A spokesman for McCain and Palin, Michael Goldfarb, dismissed the notion that Palin would bring a Jewish problem.
"If this is going to be about who was at church on the day of which sermon, that's not going to be an argument that the Obama campaign is going to win," he said, a reference to Obama's controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
"This woman has been on the national stage for all of four days - of course it's going to take some time for people to get a sense of what her views are on some things," Goldfarb said. "Once she's had a chance to make her positions clear on these issues, the Jewish community is going to be very, very comfortable with her."
In the meantime, however, there's simply little information available about Palin's views. Two of Palin's prominent Alaska Jewish allies, Rabbi Joseph Greenberg and businessman Terry Gorlick, told Politico they consider her a friend of the Jews. But they said they'd never heard her discuss Middle East policy in detail and that she'd never visited Israel, though they cited a boilerplate Alaska-Israel friendship resolution she signed.
Her thin record was underscored when the staunchly loyal Republican Jewish Coalition e-mailed its members evidence of her support for Israel: a video in which a small Israeli flag can be seen poking out from behind a drape.
"I think it speaks volumes that she keeps an Israeli flag on the wall of her office," the group's executive director, Matt Brooks, told Politico in an e-mail. "It clearly shows what's in her heart."
Obama's Jewish allies, meanwhile, are doing their best to fill that gap with unsettling information, an effort that in some ways mirrors the overt and covert campaigns against Obama in that community.
"My constituents are bewildered by Senator McCain's pick and they just don't understand it," said Wexler, the Florida Democrat, citing the report that Palin had gone to a Buchanan event, and Buchanan's "frightening views."
Also Tuesday, a new Jewish Democratic group, JewsVote.org, sent out an email under the heading "Who is Sarah Palin?" an echo of conspiratorial anti-Obama emails that have criss-crossed the Jewish community.
"Given her record as a hard-right Christian conservative, her embrace of Pat Buchanan, her praise of Ron Paul, and her lack of credentials on foreign affairs, it is likely that her selection would raise serious red flags about the McCain/Palin ticket among Jewish swing voters," they wrote, asking their members to send out their own anti-Palin emails.
McCain aide Goldfarb called the email "unbelievably cynical--fighting smears with smears." Gallup and other polls conducted over the summer showed Obama beating McCain by a roughly two-to-one margin among Jewish voters - a comfortable lead, but narrower than John Kerry's and Al Gore's wins among Jewish voters in the last two elections.
Tuesday, both sides scrambled to play on the changed turf of the Jewish vote. Palin, shepherded by Lieberman, introduced herself to leaders of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in St. Paul on. Tuesday.
"We had a good productive discussion on the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and we were pleased that Gov. Palin expressed her deep, personal, and lifelong commitment to the safety and well-being of Israel," AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said. "AIPAC is pleased that both parties have selected four pro-Israel candidates."
Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), meanwhile, campaigned through the Jewish heartland of South Florida, showing off his cultural familiarity, dropping Yiddish words into his talk to a crowd of hundreds at a retirement community.
"I want to remind those of you who don't know me -- and those of you who do know me -- what my record has been. It has been unstinting in the defense and support of Israel," he said.
It was a contrast Wexler said he relished.
"There's just no relationship, there's no comfort, there's no natural affinity with Palin," he said. "There is with Joe Biden."
The Plain Dealer is a member of the Politico Network. |
