The Republican Jewish establishment is watching the surge of political outsiders \u2014 like Donald Trump and Ben Carson \u2014 in the presidential primaries with dismay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like we have a conference call every morning, and we ask, \u2018What can we do to screw ourselves up today?\u2019\u201d said Fred Zeidman, a longtime fundraiser for Republican presidential candidates.<\/p>\n
Zeidman\u2019s exasperation pervades the Jewish Republican world: A party that has, in recent years, established a cozy relationship with Jewish conservatives seems to be careening \u2014 at least since the presidential race began.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump, the billionaire reality show star, has lobbed rhetorical bombs at Hispanics, women and GOP rivals, and promised to deport 11 million illegal immigrants. Ben Carson, the retired world-famous neurosurgeon, said this weekend that a Muslim can\u2019t be president.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis election is proving that nobody really knows anything, including me,\u201d said Seth Mandel, the Op-Ed editor of the New York Post.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a disorienting experience for longtime Republican Jewish donors and activists, who have made inroads into the party\u2019s establishment over the last two decades, and who have been at the forefront of advocacy for tolerance and pluralism within the party.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tone of what they\u2019re saying, we get painted as a party of intolerance,\u201d said Zeidman, who practices law in the Houston area and backs Bush\u2019s candidacy.<\/p>\n
The anti-immigrant rhetoric especially infuriates Zeidman, a past chairman of the US Holocaust Memorial Council, who was driving near his home during his phone interview with JTA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think half the people I\u2019m looking at doing roadwork in 100-degree heat are not legal \u2014 and they are working their tuchus off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mandel said online that white supremacist backing for Trump \u2014 who has suggested immigrants from Mexico are predominantly criminals \u2014 has been unsettling. \u201cThat will always make Jews uncomfortable, that\u2019s why there\u2019s so much pushback\u201d among some Jewish conservatives against the Trump candidacy.<\/p>\n
Tevi Troy, a deputy health secretary in the President George W. Bush administration who is not yet backing a candidate, said one plus that\u2019s emerging from the debates is that the entire range of candidates \u2014 insiders and outsiders alike \u2014 are pro-Israel and have embraced the party\u2019s skepticism of the Iran nuclear deal.<\/p>\n
Contrast that with previous Republican primary seasons, when disruptive outsiders were cool on Israel \u2013 notably in the 1990s, when Pat Buchanan ran twice, Troy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFortunately, the outsiders this time, just about all are exceedingly pro-Israel and that\u2019s a good thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Still, he noted, for a constituency that has cultivated the Republican establishment, the emergence of outsiders is discomfiting.<\/p>\n
The Republican Jewish Coalition\u2019s board is a who\u2019s who of the party\u2019s most generous givers \u2014 most famously Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate.<\/p>\n
Adelson has yet to come out for a candidate, the conventional wisdom being that he is waiting in order to avoid a repeat of 2012, when his bankrolling of long-shot Newt Gingrich ended up weakening the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney. But one of Adelson\u2019s top allies, Mort Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, recently expressed concern over Trump\u2019s behavior and lead in the polls.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump is making many of us very nervous,\u201d Klein told Talking Points Memo, speaking after Trump derided the black Carson\u2019s skills as a physician. (Carson is a world-famous neurosurgeon.) \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have the temperament to be president. I mean, really, to lash out at Carson as a talented doctor? You don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: Times of Israel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Longtime GOP Jewish donors and activists look on in dismay as the two presidential hopefuls lead the polls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":20397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[492],"tags":[2970,158,178,295,2126,2100],"class_list":["post-20395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-donald-trump","tag-gop","tag-israel","tag-jews","tag-republicans","tag-us-elections"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/carsontrump.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20396,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20395\/revisions\/20396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}