Jewish Democratic Donor Joins McCain Team

That is the headline from TheHill.com. Even though it mentions "Donor" in the singular, the McCain camp claims there is more where that came from:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is attracting elite Jewish Democratic donors who backed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and are concerned about Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) stance toward Israel, say McCain backers who are organizing the effort to court Democrats.

McCain has already had several fundraising events with Jewish Democrats in Washington and Florida, say his supporters.

He also has the backing of Democrat-turned-Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), who made history as the first Jewish vice presidential candidate and has recently raised questions about Obama’s foreign policy vision for the Middle East.

Stephen Muss, the Florida developer, is the biggest Democratic donor and fundraiser to pledge his support for McCain and the Republican National Committee, said a GOP official. Muss has given tens of thousands of dollars to help Democratic candidates in recent years, including $80,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics and CQ MoneyLine.

...“Many Jewish Democrats are sensing there is such an existential threat to Israel that you have to vote for an individual who strongly supports the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), chairman of the GOP’s Jewish Victory Coalition.

So claims the Republicans. Not surprisingly, the Democrats deny there is a problem:

Prominent Democratic fundraisers, however, say they have not encountered Clinton donors who are planning to defect to McCain.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people in the past couple of days and I have not spoken to anybody who was supporting Hillary Clinton and who has indicated any likelihood of supporting McCain,” said Steve Grossman, a former co-chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a former chairman of AIPAC, who raised tens of thousands of dollars for Clinton this election cycle.

The fact remains that Senator Joe Lieberman is actively campaigning for McCain among Democrats and Independents and could be influential among Jewish voters:

Lieberman has launched a new bipartisan grassroots group, Citizens for McCain [see modest web page here], to attract Democrats and independent voters to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

Lieberman could become a potent weapon for Republicans seeking to pick off Jewish Democrats. As the Democratic Party’s former vice presidential nominee and a former Democratic candidate for president, Lieberman is assumed to have an expansive list of Jewish Democratic donors from around the country.

Read the entire article.

It's going to get interesting.

Powerline describes just how potent a weapon Lieberman might be:

If there is one major politician who strikes fear into the heart of Barack Obama, it is Joe Lieberman, who has emerged as a primary surrogate for John McCain in this campaign. It isn't just that Lieberman is so highly regarded by a small but not insignificant number of Democrats and a decent number of independents. It's because Lieberman successfully executed something like the model John McCain hopes to use in this election to defeat a leftist opponent in the fact of a heavy pro-Democrat tide.

Specifically, Lieberman was able to rely on his popular "brand," including his reputation for independence, to defeat a leftist Democrat in a liberal state despite his staunch support for a very unpopular war (today, almost two years later, the war is merely unpopular). This is essentially what McCain hopes to accomplish. Although McCain lacks Lieberman's consistently liberal record on domestic issues (and for that reason won't carry Connecticut), he's making a good run so far at eroding Obama's support among independents and Hillary Clinton-supporting Democrats.

That explains the Newsweek hit job.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: McCain and Obama and Lieberman.