More than 400 Michigan Jewish Democrats and independents — including Democrat mega-donor Rob Orley — went public Wednesday with their support for GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers over Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.
"Many of us have been fiercely supportive of Democratic candidates and principles," the open letter says. "All of us have felt threatened and alienated by the politics and allies embraced by Abdul El-Sayed, which has included demonization of Jews, equivocation on terrorism, exclusion of Jewish Americans from public life, and expression of implacable hatred of the world’s only Jewish nation."
The statement adds that "Our vote for Mike Rogers does not require that we agree with him on every issue or that we support President Trump," so it isn't like all the signers are suddenly switching parties and donning MAGA hats.
But with the direction the Democrats are going these days, maybe that could change.
I have some personal experience here.
My paternal grandfather — who did a spectacular job of helping raise me — was Jewish. Not just Jewish, but Reformed and an urban dweller in the Central West End of St. Louis. So if you're thinking he must have been an old-school liberal Democrat, you'd only be half-right.
Born in 1915, that's certainly how he was raised. By the time he retired in the early 1990s, he wasn't just a GOP-voting, conservative-candidate-donating, Rush Limbaugh listener. He was a GOP-voting, conservative-candidate-donating, Rush Limbaugh tie-wearer. Seriously, I think he bought every tie Rush sold.
They were pretty great ties, too.
But it wasn't Rush who converted him; it was FDR.
"I listened to those fireside chats every time he was on," Granpa told me sometime around 1985 or so. "It took me about a year before I realized he didn't have a damn clue about anything he was talking about."
It helped that the first Preston Green — my older son is named for him — was an electrical engineer whose training was based on facts and reason. But the questions he started asking in 1934 or so led him to realize that as a good Jew, he couldn't be part of the Democrats' divide-and-conquer politics.
He ended up turning himself into a conservative years before even Ronald Reagan (PBUH) fully transitioned.
So I know it can be done.
I'd hoped that after a few decades spent watching the American Left turn first against Israel specifically and then against Jews in general, that it might happen sooner, faster, and all across the country.
But in Michigan, Democrat primary voters decided to take their chances sending an actual Islamist to the United States Senate, and the best that the party can come up with to soothe its Jewish constituents to place the “needs of the world” over their own “self-interest” and “security.” That came from no less than Michigan State Attorney General Dana Nessel, herself Jewish.
That thought, if you'll allow me to call it that, was echoed this week by New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. "I hope [Jewish voters] listen," she wrote. "To me there's no question that Trump and his villainous menagerie are infinitely worse than [Hasan] Piker. But telling people to ignore their own perceived self-interest is a hard sell, and El-Sayed."
“Perceived self-interest” is just a fresh coat of paint on the old communist “false consciousness” slander that people don’t really know what’s best for them, that only the Party does. It often starts with the Jews, because historically they're an easy minority to target, freeze, personalize, and polarize.
But the targeting never ends with the Jews, which is why state-sanctioned antisemitism remains one of the most accurate barometers of a nation's civic health.
Once again, the Left asks for Jews to collaborate with their destroyers. In Michigan, at least 400 brave souls say no.
For our civic health, hope that many more follow.
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