Rahm Plays the "Jewish Card"

(AP photo)

I don’t know why it took nearly a week for this story to get written up, but it was worth the wait:

At their final debate, held on Tuesday, March 31, Emanuel pulled out the Jewish card by characterizing Garcia as “Hanukkah Harry” for offering a list of expensive proposals without explaining how he would find the necessary revenue. “Such a deal!” Emanuel blurted our. And the Chicago Reader has bolstered Emanuel’s Jewish street cred when it turned up a five-second appearance by the 18-year-old Emanuel protesting during a 1978 city-approved neo-Nazi rally captured in the short documentary “Marquette Park II,” by Tom Palazzolo and Mark Rance, about one of the city’s historically white ethnic neighborhoods.

For the city’s Jewish population the choice is not about being a Jewish voter but about whether Emanuel represents Jewish-style politics — despite his years as a congressman, and chief of staff to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, respectively, with a two-and-a-half-year stint in between as an investment banker.

Even some Jews who support Emanuel say they simply don’t like him.

Rahm’s only real religion is power, which might explain that last line, but the Mayor has also been making appeals to the city’s few Republican voters. I’d be tempted to go the other way and vote for Chuy Garcia, just to help give Chicago voters what they’ve really wanted all these years.

And they’ll finally get it, too, if Rahm can’t manage to buy this election.

Such a deal!