Marc Thiessen and the myth of the American Jewish voter

[Jefferson23]

* Neocons never give up spreading bullshit.



Tuesday, Jul 13, 2010 07:14 ET

By Glenn Greenwald

(updated below)

When The Washington Post hired torture advocate and low-level Bush propagandist Marc Thiessen as an Op-Ed columnist, it got exactly what it apparently wanted: a regular dose of falsehood-filled neoconservative tripe. But even by his own lowly standards, Theissen outdoes himself today by hauling out one of the neocon Right's most disproven though still-favorite myths: that Jewish American voters are about to abandon Democratic politicians en masse because of their supposed lack of devotion to Israel. The Right spent all of 2008 spreading the myth that Obama had a "Jewish problem" because of his perceived unreliability on Israel, only for Obama to receive close to 8 out of 10 Jewish votes, even more than John Kerry received in 2004. That's because the dirty little secret of neocons is that the vast majority of Jewish American voters reject their worldview. Undeterred, Theissen today goes back to that discredited well, blaming Obama's alleged hostility toward Israel and Netanyahu for this claimed development:


The drop in Hispanic support is dwarfed by the astounding 36-point drop in support for Obama from one of the most reliable Democratic constituencies: Jewish voters.


To call this assertion factually false is to put it politely. Thiessen's link is to an April, 2010 memo from the obscure GOP polling firm McLaughlin & Associates that provides no support for his claim. Thiessen is apparently referencing that poll's first question: "Would you vote to re-elect Barack Obama as President or would you consider voting for someone else"? In response, 42% of Jewish voters said they'd vote to re-elect him, while 46% said they'd consider voting for someone else. Thus, "reasons" Theissen, because 78% of Jews voted for Obama in 2008, and only 42% now definitively say they'd re-elect him (rather than "consider voting for someone else"), he's suffered a "36-point drop in support" among Jews.

It's painfully obvious that these are completely separate questions. That voters would "consider voting for someone else" in the abstract does not mean that they've changed their views about Obama since they voted for him in 2008; voters rarely think they're voting for the perfect candidate and would almost always "consider voting for someone else." That provides no support for the claim that Jewish voters -- if faced with the same choice they had in 2008 (or a similar one) -- would do anything different. While the lowest levels of the right-wing blog sewers touted this poll the way Theissen did -- that's about the level where his Post columns reside -- even minimally honest right-wing commentators acknowledge the obvious: that Jewish support for Obama remains strong, and any declines are both proportionate to overall declines and due to discontent with his domestic not foreign policy.

At the same time this GOP poll was released, The American Jewish Committee released a much more comprehensive poll about the attitudes of Jewish voters. That led to this headline from the right-wing site Hot Air:


remainder: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/07/13/thiessen/index.html

[peacetalksforall]

1. Thanks to you, Greewald, and Salon. The GOP uses lies in every form possible.

[Jefferson23]

3. I beg your pardon, Greenwald exposes lies, he does not contribute to them. n/t

[peacetalksforall]

9. Yes, that it why I said thank you. I don't understand your post to me.

I started to write 'they' in my second sentence, I changed it to GOP to make sure my comment about lies was not misinterpreted. My screen says GOP. I'll go back and reread it.

OK, I'll change the first sentence to - Thanks to you for posting, Greewald for analyzing and reporting, and Salon for publishing the lies of the GOP - the GOP owns lies and lying methods and the outlets for spreading them.

[Jefferson23]

10. My sincerest apologies then peacetalksforall, it appeared the opposite

to me.

I'm still not clear on what lies Salon publishes, unless you mean some of their contributors opinions?

[peacetalksforall]

12. I'm not saying Salon publishes lies. I should have started a second paragraph.

Greenwalds analyzes and writes. Salon publishes. You let us know about it. All excellent.

The GOP floods the countries with the lies that we have to keep on top of.

[Jefferson23]

13. Thank you for the clarification, maybe the heat and humidity here is

getting to me, lol.

Thanks again.

[jody]

2. Thank goodness Greenwald did not scare people with the 6 Roman Catholic justices, 2/3 of SCOTUS, who

alone say what the Law of the Land aka Constitution actually means.

If he opened that can of worms he would be obligated to discuss other religious groups who have a disproportionate representation on SCOTUS.

[Jefferson23]

4. Perhaps I have misunderstood your meaning here, you think

Greenwald is trying to scare people with this information?

[jody]

7. No, just pointing out that SCOTUS has incredible power versus votes of any ethnic group. If a group

wanted to control our legislative branch for example, they could finance the campaigns of senators in the smallest 25 states, with less than 20% of our population, from which 50 senators theoretically could be elected by a simple majority or less than 10% of our population.

Those senators could control our legislative process and that could be done under the radar if they represented Democratic and Republican parties on the surface for bipartisan support of laws that would favor the agenda of for example corporatists.

Of course that's really far out :tinfoilhat: and could never happen in full view of We the People.

[peacetalksforall]

8. Oh man, do I ever feel stupid. I try to keep up - are six of them really Catholics?

Where's the list posted?

At revelatory times like this I truly treasure balance.

This is crazy?

Ok, I just looked it up.

Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Sotomayor?

Ginzburg, Breyer, and Kagan?

I'm slipping.

[jody]

11. Yes, that's the list. n/t

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

5. Using "jews" as a macro group as just as ridiculous as "hispanics"

It is just an intensely vague description of a large group of people that can cross the entire political spectrum. And there is no shortage of people like me for whom being jewish is strictly an ethnographic label and can't be correlated to an obvious position on anything. There are also pleanty of us who either simply don't care about Israel or are completely opposed to the Likudnik regime.

[Jefferson23]

6. Absolutely, and one reason why Greenwald took the time to expose the

nonsense perpetuated by Thiessen.