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August 21, 2010
Pew: Jews Leaving Dems
It turns out the Obamessiah really can pull off a miracle. Charles Blow of the NYT reports on a Pew poll which shows that Obama has performed the impossible. He's breaking the traditional hold the Democratic Party has had on Jewish voters:
... the number of Jews who identify as Republican or as independents who lean Republican has increased by more than half since the year he was elected. At 33 percent it now stands at the highest level since the data have been kept. In 2008, the ratio of Democratic Jews to Republican Jews was far more than three to one. Now it's less than two to one.This is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel, while taking "special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world," as Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, put it in June. If that sounds like courtship, it is.(It should be noted that the Pew poll was taken before Obama's bold support for the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque a few blocks north of ground zero.)