George W. Bush marches to the beat of the drummer who asks, ‘What is right?’ and not to the beat of the many drummers who ask, ‘What is popular?’
Yes, there are issues beyond Israel’s security that animate the vote of Jewish Americans. That is why Jews who are leftists first will, understandably, vote for the leftist candidate. The majority of Jews, liberal or conservative, understand why Israel needs America. And for them, the choice should be utterly obvious.
That is why former congressman and New York City mayor Ed Koch, a liberal Democrat, has announced that for the first time in his life he will vote for a Republican president. That is why Al Gore’s mentor, Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, which in its 80-year history has never endorsed a Republican for president, just wrote an opinion piece warning those who care about Israel about John Kerry. And that is why every American Arab and Muslim group that is anti-Israel is supporting John Kerry.
I have just returned from a week of speaking to Jews in the battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. I believe that more Jews than expected will vote for President Bush. I certainly hope so – for the above reasons and because there is no trait as ugly as ingratitude.
Israel Not the Only Reason to Fear Kerry
While the Right is not as predisposed to hating fellow Americans as is the Left, many non-Left Americans, while not harboring the hatred for Sen. John Kerry that the Left harbors for George W. Bush, hold John Kerry in low regard and believe that bad things would accompany a John Kerry presidency.
Here is one voter’s list:
* John Kerry was described by Lynne Cheney as ‘not a good man’ after Kerry used the Cheney daughter’s sexual orientation to score political points. She may be right. As William Safire writes, ‘The sleazier purpose of the Kerry-Edwards spotlight on Mary Cheney is to confuse and dismay Bush supporters who believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, to suggest that Bush is as soft on same-sex as Kerry is, and thereby to reduce a Bush core constituency’s eagerness to go to the polls.’ Even the press, Safire notes, has respected Mary Cheney’s right to privacy.
* John Edwards, Kerry’s choice as his running mate, is a trial lawyer who has made a fortune suing hospitals. Like many in his profession, he has made America a worse country. However, even more of his character was revealed when he said after the death of Christopher Reeve, ‘If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.’
As Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer, himself wheelchair-bound from paralysis, wrote, ‘In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable…. There is no apologizing for Edwards’s remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.’
* Normally even partisan observers of elections say nothing about the wives of presidential candidates. Aside from propriety – the families of candidates should remain off-limits to political attacks – every wife of every presidential candidate and of every president in living memory has been an asset tothe country.
It brings me no joy to say that Teresa Heinz Kerry is not worthy of being the first lady of the United States of America. From her public utterances – such as young American men and women dying in Iraq because of American ‘greed for oil’ – and her many years of financial support for radical groups, it is clear to me and many others that this woman does not particularly care for this country. Her primary identity is that of world citizen, and her values are those of France and anti-American Europe.
