Israel Alone Won't Win GOP Jewish Voters
These days, it seems that Jews have more reason to vote Republican. FrumForum’s Fred Messner noted that the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) will keep Israel a topic of debate in the election and opinion articles like Charles Krauthammer’s “What Obama Did to Israel” might put a few American Jews into the Republican camp. This is helpful but not enough. Republicans should also try to win over Jewish support with policies that reflect traditional Jewish values that respect hard work and merit, such as opposition to affirmative action and support for merit-based admissions.
Unlike in the 1930s, institutions of higher education don’t have quotas on how many Jews they are permitted to take in. Instead, by mandating that schools must take in (unjustifiably large) percentages of other racial and ethnic groups Jews (and Asians) are squeezed out of spots they would get if admissions were based solely on racially blind measures of merit such as SAT scores and grades.
Regarding the Michigan affirmative action case of the early 2000s, Judge Danny Boggs noted that ‘a significant proportion’ of the Michigan law school applicants who lose out because of ‘diversity’ preferences were Jewish. Jews represent two percent of the population and 23 percent of the Ivy League and other competitive institutions (including University of Michigan). In a racially blind system that judged solely on merit as measured by test scores and GPAs, Jews could rise above even 23 percent.
Democrats support affirmative action to a far greater extent than Republicans. In the 5-4 Michigan affirmative action ruling, all four justices opposing racial preferences were Republican appointees. Chief Justice Rehnquist’s quote from the case accurately reflects the sentiment of many conservatives: “Stripped of its ‘critical mass’ veil, the law school’s program is revealed as a naked effort to achieve racial balancing.”
By contrast, liberal democrats such as Nancy Pelosi fight to keep quotas in school and seek to put quotas in new domains such as financial provisions of Dodd Frank.
As noted by Earl Raab, Jews have always latched onto the American ideal that “all ethnic groups have the right to be rewarded on individual merit, regardless of ethnicity.” The Republican Party should argue that it believes in this meritocratic model more than Democrats.
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