More in ‘Republicans’

Last week’s construction announcement in Israel has rippled through a political system halfway across the world. While most Republicans and many Democrats have criticized the administration, some have backed it and turned their criticism toward Israel. Anyway, the Obama administration has its uses for that criticism, too: it may just help buttress its credibility in ...

• New documents purport to show that Iran tried to purchase nuclear weapons from Pakistan in 1987. [Haaretz]
• The Monsey, N.Y., Beit Din investigating Rabbi Leib Tropper filed a civil suit to get him removed from one yeshiva’s bank accounts. [FailedMessiah]
• A Republican research document, apparently geared toward winning over Ohio’s (not insubstantial) Jewish community, ...

In a Boston Globe column, Jesse Singal articulates the notion that some American Jews may have drifted away from strong support for Israel, or its policies—but not in ways that doom the Democratic Party to shed Jewish voters, or that doom Israel to declining baseline American support.
The premise of the piece—titled “The New American ...

In a post earlier today (which caught the eye of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Twitter), I said that the Democratic Party, which has moved toward weaker support of Israel even while maintaining the allegiance of most American Jews, would likely find itself in trouble with Jewish voters if prominent members began to question some of ...

In last week’s Jewish Week, James Besser expressed concern that the rise of the right-wing Tea Party movement within the Republican Party could cause the GOP real problems with minority voters—including, and maybe especially, Jews—once the Tea Partiers moved beyond taxes and health care and into social issues. A number of political scientists agreed. One ...

• The International Atomic Energy Agency released a new report on Iran, disclosing that, due to a lack of Iranian cooperation, the agency could not “confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.” [JTA]
• The report also concluded, in stronger language than past agency statements, that the mystery Syrian compound that Israel ...

The single best predictor of how a person will vote is how their parents voted, according to Poli-Sci 101. Sure, there’s some give at the margins—and sometimes quite a lot of give, which can produce a permanent realignment—but, for the most part, people stick to the allegiances they learned early on. So we’re a little ...

• Two South Carolina Republican officials defended U.S. Senator Jim DeMint against the accusation that he hasn’t directed enough money to public projects: “There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies.… DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies.” [JTA]
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• At this week’s conference, Fatah resolves that Israel bears full responsibility for the death of former leader Yasser Arafat. [JPost]
• Still hoping to revive peace talks, the U.S. asks Israel to freeze settlement growth for one year. [Reuters]
• Meanwhile, a group of Republican leaders on a visit to Israel think President Obama should shift ...

These are dark times for American conservatives. When they aren’t issuing recriminations at one another for the loss of the White House, they’re resorting to increasingly desperate tactics against the new president. Obama’s international allure, many on the right insist, is at odds with his duty to uphold and defend strictly American interests; his cosmopolitan ...