Forget "Jewish Lobby"--Let's Just Get Right Down To It And Talk About "Jewish Money"!

Not too subtle:

McMahon Campaign Hits Grimm For Taking "Jewish Money" 

Mike Grimm, a G.O.P challenger for Mike McMahon's Congressional seat, took in over $200,000 in his last filing.

But in an effort to show that Grimm lacks support among voters in the district, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, the McMahon campaign compiled a list of Jewish donors to Grimm and provided it to The Politicker.


The file, labeled "Grimm Jewish Money Q2," for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home.

"Where is Grimm's money coming from," said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon's campaign spokeman. "There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees."

As a point of comparison, the campaign also provided in-district and out-of-district fundraising totals from McMahon and Grimm's G.O.P primary opponent, Michael Allegretti. However, they did not provide an out-of-district campaign filing from Grimm, but only a file of Jewish donors to him.

Oh, and if you're wondering just how it is that they were able to figure out which donors are Jewish and which are not--

Nelson said that the list was compiled by the campaign's finance director, Debra Solomon and that she did not know exactly how the finance team knew who was Jewish and who was not.

"She herself is Jewish so she knows a lot of people in that community," Nelson said.

This of course is not to say that McMahon is not above taking "Jewish money" himself:

McMahon meanwhile has been trying to make his own in-roads into the Jewish community. A source said that he is scheduled to meet next week with several major Jewish donors.

Oh. That should be interesting.

Jennifer Rubin writes that Nelson and the staffer who put the list together were fired and McMahon issued an apology. Still, this incident is part of a growing trend:

The incident is nevertheless telling. The multiplicity of incidents — like the White House press corps’ indulging Helen Thomas and the dual-loyalty canard that is bandied about by left-leaning bloggers and anonymous White House sources – is becoming hard to ignore. It suggests that the trip wire that snares racists and misogynists is curiously nowhere to be found when it comes to anti-Semitism.

America is not Europe and anti-Semitism is not yet fashionable or commonplace in “polite” company. (At least Nelson was canned rather than lionized and Thomas was finally put out to pasture.) But what was unheard of a few years ago is now popping up with alarming frequency. Peddlers of virulent anti-Semitism now appear in mainstream publications and their arguments are entertained as legitimate. That should concern us all.

Yes, ti should.

Technorati Tag: Mike McMahon and Anti-Semitism.