Now that our state’s former lieutenant governor is head of the Republican Party, what will it mean for outreach to Jews?

Not much … and here’s why.

If one looks at the numbers of American Jewry – always much more reliable than the anecdotal evidence many prefer –Jewish voters in this country have not moved in the past few decades from their solid Democratic base. The American Jewish Committee’s annual survey of American Jewish opinion makes this clear – despite the fact that around one-third of the Jews claim themselves as Independents. The fact is, the vast majority of that group votes Democrat in presidential elections. In fact, around 78 percent of Jews did so in this past election.

As that’s been happening, the Republicans have gone full press on courting Jews on their staunch pro-Israel support. Still, for most American Jews that’s obviously not been enough. For a national perspective, check out what my friend James. D. Besser just wrote in the New York Jewish Week: CLICK HERE

The Republicans, of course, do have a majority of Orthodox Jews, but that segment of our community only constitutes about 10-15 percent of U.S. Jewry (depending on what survey you want to use).

Meanwhile, what did Mr. Steele’s tenure as an elected official in Maryland show us? For starters he is an extremely likeable and personable. Like his boss, now former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., Mr. Steele had excellent relationships with Jewish leaders in the state.

That had a lot more to do with personality than policies. In fact, Mr. Steele headed the state’s first faith-based office, which intended to mirror President George W. Bush’s controversial effort on the national level. But in Maryland this did not account for much and the organized Jewish community’s questions were never answered: Who defines a religion? Should the Nation of Islam get funds? What about Jews for Jesus? And why – pray tell – were existing laws that enabled groups such as the Catholic Charities and the Jewish Family Services to get state funds not sufficient? Why drop the safeguards on hiring and practice in these operations?

Then came the big gaffe. When speaking to the Baltimore Jewish Council in February 2006 – amidst his failed U.S. Senate run against now Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Mr. Steele compared embryonic stem cell research to the Holocaust. Coming from a former Catholic seminarian, the remark made sense (despite my staunch disagreement with it). Coming from a politician, it was a gargantuan mistake. Mr. Steele correctly took a public beating over it. Jewish leaders accepted his subsequent apology; Jewish voters have long memories.

Nationally, Mr. Steele’s job in part is to open the GOP to groups that have in the past rejected its outreach – particularly Jews (with their prodigious fund-raising skills) and African Americans, whose loyalty the Democratic Party now seems to have a lock box on for the next eight years.

Mr. Steele, however, has charm and savvy. He’s currently playing the role of a moderate – just as Howard Dean successfully did from the other side of the aisle for the past four years. He’s generally known here as a conservative GOPer. Will the new Michael Steele’s work make a difference with Jews? At the moment, the odds of that are as likely as George Mitchell bragging at the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem about how in the morning he dedicated a Koran in Yassir Arafat’s memory.

‘The name of this publication should be changed to “The Baltimore Sometimes Jewish but Always Liberal-Democrat Times.”’

Hey, Neil. That’s a teriffic idea! Very catchy title. I say the folks at Alter should go for it!

Neil:

2 questions:

1. Regarding bogus analogies to the Holocaust, can you point me to anything you or anyone on the Jewish Times staff has written that deplores, or even mentions, the fact that supporters of so-called man-made global warming equate questioning of their scientifically-bogus theory to Holocaust denial?

2. Are you saying Mr. Steele was one kind of politician before he assumed his current office, and something different before doing so?

While I certainly disagree with this, it surely bears mentioning that this publication placed nothing like the same retrospective scrutiny, or innuendo, on Obama. His associations were glossed over, even though many of them were virulently anti-Semitic (Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan., etc.).

By the way, foreign policy adviser Samantha Power, who is on record saying international troops should be placed in “Palestine” to fight the IDF, is, to the surprise of no serious-minded person, now part of the Obama administration.

Did you comment on her during the campaign? Where is your comment on her now?

Once again, Mr. Rubin sees what he already believes, this time regarding Mr. Steele. Other “facts,” far more harmful to Jews and Israel, elude him altogether, because they don’t fit his ideological “narrative.”

The name of this publication should be changed to “The Baltimore Sometimes Jewish but Always Liberal-Democrat Times.”