While investigating a number of background issues that help to make Obama so attractive to American Jews, Rubin also finds additional factors specific to the especially high Jewish support for Obama in 2008.
Among some of those factors, Barry Rubin lists:
- Fear: Jews buy into the idea that Republicans, conservatives--and opposition to Obama--are all somehow racist and reactionary Christian. They fear the alleged anti-Jewish religiosity of conservatives and Evangelical Christians..
- Propaganda: Being highly educated and literate, Jews are more heavily impacted by schools and tend to give higher credibility to the fairness of media.
- Camouflage: The hiding of Obama’s radicalism, and portraying his as a liberal plays into Jewish reverence for liberalism.
- Obama’s persona: Obama's image as an apparently highly educated, supposedly intellectual, superficially sophisticated, cosmopolitan personality fits with majority Jewish preferences.
There is more to Jewish support for Obama than some indelible universal memory of the Roosevelt years. At the same time, though the attraction that both the Democratic Party and Obama hold for Jews remains strong, it can fluctuate.
Which is one of the stories so far in this election.
Technorati Tag: Jews and Obama and Election 2012.
Probably for the same reason rednecks defend GOP attempts to defeat the estate tax which they themselves haven't the remotest likelihood of ever exploiting. Branding. It's all about branding.
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