* Neocons never give up spreading bullshit.
Tuesday, Jul 13, 2010 07:14 ET
By Glenn Greenwald
(updated below)
When The Washington Post hired torture advocate and low-level Bush propagandist Marc Thiessen as an Op-Ed columnist, it got exactly what it apparently wanted: a regular dose of falsehood-filled neoconservative tripe. But even by his own lowly standards, Theissen outdoes himself today by hauling out one of the neocon Right's most disproven though still-favorite myths: that Jewish American voters are about to abandon Democratic politicians en masse because of their supposed lack of devotion to Israel. The Right spent all of 2008 spreading the myth that Obama had a "Jewish problem" because of his perceived unreliability on Israel, only for Obama to receive close to 8 out of 10 Jewish votes, even more than John Kerry received in 2004. That's because the dirty little secret of neocons is that the vast majority of Jewish American voters reject their worldview. Undeterred, Theissen today goes back to that discredited well, blaming Obama's alleged hostility toward Israel and Netanyahu for this claimed development:
The drop in Hispanic support is dwarfed by the astounding 36-point drop in support for Obama from one of the most reliable Democratic constituencies: Jewish voters.
To call this assertion factually false is to put it politely. Thiessen's link is to an April, 2010 memo from the obscure GOP polling firm McLaughlin & Associates that provides no support for his claim. Thiessen is apparently referencing that poll's first question: "Would you vote to re-elect Barack Obama as President or would you consider voting for someone else"? In response, 42% of Jewish voters said they'd vote to re-elect him, while 46% said they'd consider voting for someone else. Thus, "reasons" Theissen, because 78% of Jews voted for Obama in 2008, and only 42% now definitively say they'd re-elect him (rather than "consider voting for someone else"), he's suffered a "36-point drop in support" among Jews.
It's painfully obvious that these are completely separate questions. That voters would "consider voting for someone else" in the abstract does not mean that they've changed their views about Obama since they voted for him in 2008; voters rarely think they're voting for the perfect candidate and would almost always "consider voting for someone else." That provides no support for the claim that Jewish voters -- if faced with the same choice they had in 2008 (or a similar one) -- would do anything different. While the lowest levels of the right-wing blog sewers touted this poll the way Theissen did -- that's about the level where his Post columns reside -- even minimally honest right-wing commentators acknowledge the obvious: that Jewish support for Obama remains strong, and any declines are both proportionate to overall declines and due to discontent with his domestic not foreign policy.
At the same time this GOP poll was released, The American Jewish Committee released a much more comprehensive poll about the attitudes of Jewish voters. That led to this headline from the right-wing site Hot Air:
remainder:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/07/13/thiessen/index.html