Israel,Weprin, Turner - All Turned Around

Consider this:

The question, of course, is what this Republican victory portends for the president in 2012. The Obama camp was quick to dismiss the results of the special election as, well, special...Others see Turner’s victory as the beginning of the end of the New Deal Coalition: the marriage between Jews and the Democratic Party consummated by Roosevelt 80 years ago. Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf believes Weprin’s defeat signals a major realignment of the Jewish vote. There’s a “new Jewish vote that is observant and communally based,” Sheinkopf told me Monday. Secular liberal Jews are intermarrying and thus, he argues, losing their connection with Israel. Those that remain in the community are more observant and behave politically more like Catholics, Democratic-leaning swing voters, than reliable Democrats as Jews traditionally have been.

But this as well:

...Turner does not seem to have given much thought to U.S. policy in the Middle East. When I interviewed him Tuesday at his campaign headquarters, the Republican thought that the message Jewish voters were sending was merely that Obama should be friendlier toward Israel. Turner fumbled when I asked about specific policy measures that the administration should take to show this friendliness. Finally, he settled on moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, an issue that Koch dismissed as “not a big deal.” Yet, Turner continued to play up Israel as an issue on election night, putting an Israeli flag along with the American flag on stage at his campaign event. But it was clear that his advocacy for the Jewish State was not a political opportunity that he found, but a political opportunity that found him...

... When the Orthodox Jew loses an election because he can’t attract the pro-Israel vote, something else is going on. It may be a vast shift, or more likely the type of quirk that puts the special in special elections. Either way, for the next year, the Zionist congressman from the Jewish district in Queens will be a devout Catholic from the Rockaways.

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