I must confess that I didn’t get all riled up about the Webb campaign’s supposed journey into anti-Semitism two years ago. Having grown up in the north Jersey suburbs, I’d seen genuine, undiluted anti-Semitism up close for many years, and I couldn’t make the connection between that and a depiction of Harris Miller’s nose. I also didn’t see what Riley at Virginia Virtucon saw in the constant reference to George Allen’s middle name, but that may have been due to an overload of The Odd Couple reruns on WPIX when I was a kid.
Anyhow, my point is this: having seen so much in-your-face anti-Semitism during my formative years, it takes a little more to make me think someone is trying to fan those embers. That said, the latest DNC vent against Eric Cantor (Shaun Kenney, Riley at VV, and Write Side of My Brain) sure fits the bill.
There is no need to mention Cantor’s faith five times in 660 words, unless one is trying to make sure it is the firstthing that comes to mind when the person is mentioned in the future. Negative campaigning is all about defining the opponent before he can define himself – and the DNC seems determined to have Cantor defined by the voters as a Jew.
The above bloggers I cite see this as a clear sign of anti-Semitism within the Democratic Party. I’m not so sure of that (yet), but I do see a logical political reason to do this – a reason which, frankly, is no better than if the party really were a bunch of Jew-haters.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Bob Barr should draw votes away from John McCain – for a lot of Dems, the Barr campaign was supposed to be their ace-in-the-hole (this is no reflection on Barr himself). However, most polls show that Barr hardly takes anything away from McCain, largely because voters understand that only John McCain is determined to win the WBK War, whereas the others would either scale it down or sue for peace.
However, the Democrats have not one, but two left-wing candidates drawing voters away from them: Ralph Nader and Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney. With The Audacity of Hype suddenly talking about putting more troops in Afghanistan and supporting the President on wiretapping authority, he has been bleeding voters leftward – not many, mind you, but in a race this close, they all count.
Here’s the kicker, though: Nader is Arab-American, and McKinney is a 9/11 truther whose father publicly blamed the entire Jewish community for his daughter’s 2002 re-election primary loss (Cynthia McKinney is a former member of Congress). Meanwhile, Barr, while certainly steering clear of anyethnic references in his campaign, has been campaigning on the typical anti-neo-con rhetoric.
For many leftist and paleocons (they call themselves “traditional conservatives” if memory serves),”neo-con” is code for “Jew who supports the President.”
That’swhy the DNC put this flyer out – to win over third-party supporters by scaring them into voting Democrat to keep the Vice Presidency out of the hands of a Jewish Congressman.
It’s despicable; it’s sickening; it’s unbelievable callous; and if McCain gets wind of it, it may be what actually stirs him to pick Cantor.
The more I think about it, the angrier I get. I grew up with a Holocaust survivor in my neighborhood. I saw the number tattooed on his arm. My grandfather served in the Army Air Corps during World War II.
That some flunky at the DNC (or, more likely, an unnamed high-ranking party official who’d rather stay anonymous) decide it was better to reach into the sludge that spawned the evil my grandfather fought than to allow Barack Obama to lose voters to third-party alternatives is revolting.
This is the “new politics”? Are you kidding me?
I note that with Harris Miller the issue was not only the “hooked nose” thing but also calling him “antichrist.” Many of the leftists who justify this kind of rhetoric against Miller and Cantor see nothing wrong with anything that Jim Moran says or does.
Excellent post!
There is an irony here. Guess who supports – loves – the Jews? Evangelical Christians. Great way to motivate the base of the GOP.