Ignoring Arab-Americans in '08?

Well, Arab-Americans shouldn't feel slighted, African-Americans were "dissed" too. Like I said before, you gotta be Jewish to get heard in America anymore.

by STEVEN GRAY - Oct 31, 2007

In 2003, Arab-Americans believed they were at a positive turning point. Most of the presidential candidates appeared in person or via satellite before that year's Arab-American Institute's National Leadership Conference. It was a far cry from two decades earlier, when a major candidate, Walter Mondale, very publicly returned donations from a group of Arab-American businessmen, saying it was his campaign's policy not to accept them from the ethnic group.

But 2003 may have been the high-water mark. At the same conference, held in Dearborn, Michigan, last weekend, none of the top-tier candidates from either party showed up. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, was the most prominent candidate to attend. Several Democrats submitted videotaped messages, but none of the major Republican candidates bothered to send even those. The absence of major candidates from both sides of the political fence underscores the perception among many Arab- and Muslim-American leaders that they've been deemed politically expendable - even as some of the 2008 election's key issues (such as the Iraq War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the debate over balancing domestic security and civil liberties) are of particular interest to their community.

Arab-Americans constitute a relatively marginal share of the U.S. electorate - just 1.3 million voters, according to independent polling firm Zogby International - but make up a potentially crucial voting bloc in battleground states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. They account for roughly 4% of all voters here in Michigan, home to the highest concentration of Arab-Americans. They tend to be better educated and more affluent than the U.S. population at large, and in recent years have swung between Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. "This is a community that is very much up for grabs, that's waiting to be wooed," says George Salem, a longtime Republican and the Arab-American Institute's chairman.

None of the campaigns offered a significant explanation for their candidates' absence from this year's conference, or their failure to accept an invitation to participate in a question-and-answer session via satellite. A spokeswoman for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, a Democrat, said he had previously scheduled campaign events in Iowa.

Part of the blame may lie with the Michigan primary, which has been scheduled for Jan. 15. Some Democratic candidates have pledged not to campaign in Michigan because the primary's new early date violates Democratic National Committee rules. Some candidates have pulled out of Michigan's primary altogether. However, Democratic officials in four other early-primary states - New Hampshire, Nevada, Iowa and South Carolina - have made an exception for the Arab-American Institute's conference, permitting Democratic candidates to attend the event if they wish. Given that exception, says Jim Zogby, the institute's president, whose brother heads the Zogby poll, says of the candidates: "They should have been here."

The conference opened Friday with speeches from two lower-tier candidates who did attend: Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a Republican, and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, a Democrat. On Saturday, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton delivered a brief videotaped message, as did Barack Obama and John Edwards on Sunday. Speaking in person at the Doubletree Hotel in Dearborn, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, drew applause from the conference's 600 or so participants with the observation that the field of Republican presidential candidates "looks like America in the 1950s, and when they open their mouths, sound like they're in the 1850s." Bill Richardson played up his diplomatic credentials and pledged that, if elected, he would swiftly close the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and more vigorously engage Iran and Syria.

The conference had an unmistakably Democratic tone, reflecting the fact that nearly 40% of Arab-Americans identify as Democrats (about 26% identify as Republican, down from 38% a decade ago). Particularly pronounced was the anxiety of many Arab-American Republicans. In 2000, President Bush won significant support from many Arab-American groups after expressing sensitivity toward racial profiling of Arab-Americans during the second presidential debate. But following his Administration's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, that support began to erode.

Randa Fahmy Hudome, a longtime Republican consultant, reflects that alienation. She points to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's recent television ads, in which he says, "It's this century's nightmare: jihadism - violent, radical, Islamic fundamentalism. Their goal is to unite the world under a single jihadist caliphate. To do that, they have to collapse freedom-loving nations like us." Hudome complained about the ad to the Romney campaign. Now, she calls herself a "DR" - a "Disaffected Republican" - and is considering supporting Barack Obama.

Many people at the conference said that in order to win the support of Arab-Americans, candidates on both sides of the fence must at least show a willingness to meet with them in person. Still, despite the absence of major candidates, Rebecca Abou-Chedid, the institute's national political director, says the conference wasn't a failure. She points to heightened interest in the institute's grassroots voter campaign, dubbed "Yalla Vote 2008" - Arabic for "Let's Go Vote 2008." Still, she says, "For a community that's still fighting to have a place at the table, you don't want to feel like you're going backwards if part of your measurement is how many presidential candidates attend."

View from America: Pandering instead of policy

I guess Fred Thompson is really going to throw his hat in the Presidential ring. As, with almost all of American's politicians these days, one of his very first moves was to bow to the throne of zionism. Notice how Ron Paul is described as "wacky, right wing." Representative Paul believes as I do: WE NEED AMERICAN POLITICIANS WHO PUT AMERICA FIRST!

jonathan s. tobin, THE JERUSALEM POST

If there were any doubts about the fact that one-time Tennessee senator and actor Fred Thompson was about to run for the Republican nomination for president, it was not due to his recent tiff with filmmaker Michael Moore or his appearances on Fox News and various other venues.

It was the fact that he used a radio commentary spot, the text of which was subsequently published in the on-line version of National Review magazine, to articulate his stout support for Israeli counterattacks against Palestinian missile attacks on the city of Sderot, his firm opposition to Hamas and his skepticism about the Palestinian desire for peace.

Good for Thompson for stating such views. But we are all entitled to notice that articulating these positions (which make him hardly unique among presidential contenders) is a function more of his desire to win support from friends of Israel for his presidential ambitions than anything else.

After all, who remembers Thompson ever taking a leadership position on support for Israel during his eight years in the Senate? Not that he was ever counted among Zion's foes, but there's something about having your name mentioned as a possible presidential candidate that seems to bring out Zionists in the most unlikely places.

There are many questions yet to be answered about Thompson's possible run. But his desire for Jewish support and contributions for his campaign is not in doubt.

ELECTION-YEAR conversions are nothing new. Who can forget Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.), never previously identified as a friend of Israel, who sought to bolster the appeal of his doomed presidential campaign in 1996 by pushing through legislation to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? The odds of the embassy actually being moved were even lower than Dole's chances of beating Bill Clinton that November. So, too, were the chances that many Jews would take the bait and back him.

But as the desperate search for campaign dollars gets into full swing, it is worthwhile pondering what exactly it is that friends of Israel should be asking the many men and one woman who stand a chance of actually taking the oath of office on January 21, 2009.

BEFORE ANSWERING that question, it should be stipulated that the majority of Jews will never vote for a candidate based on his or her stance on Israel. Most of us are rigidly partisan, with Jewish loyalty to the Democratic Party being second only to that of African-Americans. Anyone who discounts either the loyalty of most Jews to the Democrats, and thus their hostility especially to religious conservatives in the GOP, hasn't been paying attention over the last 20 years.

But to recognize this fact is not to discount the possibility that any candidate can win or lose critical campaign funding, as well as eventually some votes, by their stands on Middle East issues.

On Israel itself, outside of fringe candidates like the wacky right-wing libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and the leftist Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), there isn't too much daylight between the candidates on support for Israel's right of self-defense, as well as on their disdain for Hamas.

DEMOCRATS have uniformly scorned the Bush administration for its lack of "engagement" in the process. Dovish groups like the Israel Policy Forum have echoed that theme. But while bashing Bush is good politics at the moment, nobody in either party can point to what could actually be accomplished with a repeat of the kind of engagement in the peace process that characterized the Clinton administration.

No amount of encouragement from Washington is going to change the corrupt and violent nature of Fatah. And despite US help, Fatah's forces were easily routed by Hamas in Gaza. No one - including Republicans like Rudy Giuliani, who endorsed more aid for Fatah - should expect either half of the Palestinian political spectrum to do what needs to be done to end terrorism or begin to build a rational state.

ANOTHER POINT on which there is seeming consensus is opposition to the Iranian drive to acquire nuclear weapons. Both Democrats and Republicans have addressed the dangers of such a development and expressed support for a strong policy seeking to head it off.

But the tricky part is not to say you don't want Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to have his finger on a nuclear button, but how to make sure it doesn't happen.

Most Republicans have been eager to say that they won't take the military option off the table. Is such a threat credible? That's uncertain given both the military situation in Iraq and the inherent difficulties of such an operation under even the most ideal circumstances.

Democrats have wavered on that point (John Edwards has come down, at times, on both sides of the question), but given the determinedly anti-war stands of all the Democrats, it isn't clear how any of them can win Democratic primary votes while contemplating using force against Iran.

And that, like the rest of the rhetoric about fighting the war on Islamist terrorism, is the crux of both parties' problems in coping with the Middle East.

It is easy for all of them to wave the flag of devotion for Israel. And it is just as easy for candidates of either party to criticize the conduct of the war in Iraq.

But the crucial question facing the eventual winner in November 2008 is what they are going to do about Iran.

FOR NOW, like Bush, they can all pray the Europeans and Russia will unite around a tough sanctions protocol that will turn the tide in Teheran. They can also hope that internal divisions in Iran will convince the mullahs who hold the power behind Ahmadinejad that they must turn back from a policy of confrontation.

But if none of that works, and the day dawns - in the next president's term - when Iran will actually have the nuclear capability to destroy Israel (and threaten the West), then we must ask what these would-be presidents would actually do.

Will any of them have the mettle to face up to the challenge and act to forestall catastrophe? Or will they weakly sit back and wait for futile diplomacy to defuse a crisis that is already out of control?

It is on that point - and not the usual pandering to pro-Israel sentiment - that friends of the Jewish state should judge the candidates.

Heaven help us all if we choose incorrectly.

jtobin@jewishexponent.com