Odds And Ends

Posted on: February 5th, 2003

Tell Us Again About Liberal Patriotism - The date: Dec. 27. The setting: Neal Cavuto's Fox News program. Liberal commentator Ellen Ratner was chatting with Brenda Buttner, who was sitting in for Cavuto. The gist of the conversation, until Ratner briefly took off her mask of civility, was that President Bush appears almost impossible to beat in 2004.

Media Morons, Take A Bow

Posted on: January 29th, 2003

The Media Research Center is out with its annual "Best Notable Quotables" list of what it calls "the year's worst reporting." Here are just a few examples of the liberal bias and stupidity that come pouring out of the mouths and word processors of media types on a daily basis. (Visit www.mrc.org for the complete list.)

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part XIV)

Posted on: January 22nd, 2003

Here we are fourteen weeks into our series on Jewish voting habits, and the Monitor admits to having no single satisfactory answer to why Jews are still, after all these years, in such utter thrall to the Democratic party.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part XIII)

Posted on: January 15th, 2003

Before concluding our series on Jewish voting habits in next week's Monitor, we devote this week's installment to some of the more colorful responses we've received from die-hard Democrats. Wear your helmets.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part XII)

Posted on: January 8th, 2003

Al Gore's surprise choice in August 2000 of Joseph Lieberman as his running mate electrified American Jews, and seemed to foreclose any possibility that George W. Bush would even approach the poor numbers put up among Jewish voters by his father in 1992 (15 percent) and Bob Dole in 1996 (16 percent).

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part XI)

Posted on: January 1st, 2003

There is every reason to believe that had Bill Clinton been on the ballot in the 2000 presidential election, American Jews would have voted in overwhelming numbers to return him to office for a third term.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part X)

Posted on: December 25th, 2002

Jewish voters gave Bill Clinton 78 percent of their votes in 1992 and again in 1996 - at the time the best showing by a presidential candidate among Jews since Hubert Humphrey won 81 percent of the Jewish vote in 1968 - and their love for Clinton never dimmed during the course of his tumultuous presidency.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part IX)

Posted on: December 18th, 2002

The 1988 presidential election - unlike those of, say, 1972 and 1980 - was notable for its lack of sharp differentiation between the Republican and Democratic nominees on the issue of Israel and the Middle East.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part VIII)

Posted on: December 11th, 2002

A majority of American Jewish voters had deserted Jimmy Carter in 1980, leading to speculation that the Jewish community perhaps was moving away from its longtime loyalty to the Democratic party and rendering obsolete Milton Himmelfarb's famous observation that "Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans."

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part VII)

Posted on: December 4th, 2002

The 1980 presidential election, like the Nixon-McGovern matchup eight years earlier, offered a clear choice between a Republican candidate who was unambiguous in his support of Israel and a Democrat whose record was something less than sterling. Only this time, the pro-Israel candidate was the challenger, former California governor Ronald Reagan, while the more problematic candidate was the incumbent, James Earl Carter.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part VI)

Posted on: November 27th, 2002

Although it played out more than two years after the fact, the 1976 presidential campaign was overshadowed by the Watergate scandal, with voters still angry over President Gerald Ford's pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon, who resigned the presidency to escape impeachment.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part V)

Posted on: November 20th, 2002

We left off last week in the midst of the 1972 presidential campaign, one of the more interesting in terms of Jewish voting behavior. On one hand you had the incumbent, Republican Richard Nixon, whose relationship with Israel during his first term was quite solid; on the other you had his Democratic challenger, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, a leading dove on Vietnam with a not especially inspiring record on Israel.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part IV)

Posted on: November 13th, 2002

There never was much doubt that Jews would vote in large numbers for Democrat Lyndon Johnson over Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 - a year when even many moderate members of his own party were high-tailing it away from the GOP's outspokenly conservative standard bearer.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part III)

Posted on: November 6th, 2002

The presidential election of 1928 is seen by most political historians as something of a demarcation line in the history of Jewish voting loyalties. It was in that election that the Democrats first began polling landslide numbers among American Jews, as New York governor Al Smith, a Roman Catholic of immigrant stock (whose campaign manager happened to be Jewish) captured 72 percent of the Jewish vote.

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part II)

Posted on: November 1st, 2002

Why are Jews still wedded to the Democratic party, years after it stopped making any economic or political sense for them to remain in the marriage? It's a question one hears often from bewildered non-Jews and Republican Jews (Democratic Jews - i.e. the vast majority of American Jews - seem oblivious to the question, let alone any possible answer).

Bush, Jews And Democrats (Part I)

Posted on: October 23rd, 2002

The front page story in last week's Jewish Press ("Israelis Sing Bush's Praises") - coming as it did almost simultaneously with the release of a Gallup poll that, on the surface at least, seemed to dash any Republican hopes that American Jews might be warming to the GOP - inspired a batch of letters and e-mails from obviously intelligent readers who just don't get it.

Random Thoughts

Posted on: October 16th, 2002

A few items of interest as the Monitor catches up after a break from the regular routine: Reporting on the defeat of Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in an Aug. 20 Democratic primary, the Prince of Palestine, aka Peter Jennings, once again exhibited his bias and unreliability on all matters pertaining to Israel.

Sulzberger’s ‘Shrinkage’ Problem

Posted on: September 25th, 2002

"The incredibly shrinking" New York Times is how George Will describes the one-time paper of record, a formerly respectable journalistic enterprise that, in Will's words, is "reinventing itself along the lines of a factional broadsheet..."

Monitor’s Top Ten

Posted on: September 18th, 2002

The responses are finally slowing to a trickle, but the columns on Israel's friends in the media certainly elicited plenty of feedback from readers. Here's a sampling, followed by the Monitor's very own Media Friends Top Ten list (as distinguished from the earlier two lists which reflected the votes of readers).

UN Report Debunks Fleet Street Lies

Posted on: September 11th, 2002

Due to the heavier than anticipated response to our Top 25 and Top 10 "Media Friends" lists as voted on by the public, the Monitor will wait another week before sharing a last batch of comments from readers and unveiling the Monitor's own list.