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Follow the money, stupid

When US journalists assert that Romney is playing up the Israel issue to win Jewish votes from Obama, I’ve repeatedly said that they are hiding the more important battle, for cash. James Besser in the Jewish Week agrees with me:

So why are Jewish Republicans spending millions portraying Obama as a threat to the Jewish state?

The reason is money. While Jewish voting isn’t very Israel-focused, Jewish campaign giving is — and especially the mega-giving that is playing a bigger role than ever in Election 2012.  Tarring Obama as anti-Israel, while not influencing many Jewish votes, galvanizes the growing base of wealthy pro-Israel givers and provides a platform for their generally hard-line views, one more front in the internal Jewish debate over Israel’s future.

Jewish Republicans aren’t indifferent to the possibility of picking up some extra Jewish votes, especially in critical states like Florida, but few are naive enough to believe there’s a chance of winning over enough to make a real difference in the final vote tally. Jewish votes — a drop in the huge electoral bucket — are much less important than Israel-focused campaign cash.

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Yep, the Jewish mass vote is trivial; it’s all about big Zionist bucks. It it was not so horrifying how America’s foreign policy in the key ME has been hi-jacked, it would be really amusing how our mainstream media plays up the importance of Jewish votes but not the much more important Zionist mega campaign donations. Even when our intrepid objective journalists and media news stars feel compelled to bring up donor stars such as Sheldon Adelson–beginning with when he was showering plump frog Newt with cash to such an extent it even leaked down to Dick and Jane–while they will bring up Adelson, even on Fox News, they never discuss his sole agenda, even though he publicly declared it–Israel. Imagine watching some craft show episode where the guy with the tool belt is building a bird house, and he cuts, saws, drills, planes, paints, grabs some nails–then presto! Here’s our beautiful birdhouse! And we never got to see Mr Crafty use his hammer to pound in even one of those nails.

Enough Jewish voters in Florida accidentally voted for Buchanan to throw the election to Bush. After all the talk about chaos theory and butterfly wings, it is funny that the fate of the world was so different because of a butterfly ballot.

Don’t discount the effects of a small percentage of votes in our (mostly) winner takes all electoral votes system.

But what was the article’s headline. . .

Eyeing Jewish Vote In U.S., Romney Goes To Israel

Kathleen posted a link the other day to a pie chart at Informed Comment that showed that Adelson represents about 15% of the total 501(c)(4)/SuperPAC giving this cycle.

http://www.juancole.com/2012/08/your-election-is-being-bought-by-47-billionaires-and-they-are-buying-war-climate-change.html

“While Jewish voting isn’t very Israel-focused, Jewish campaign giving is — and especially the mega-giving that is playing a bigger role than ever in Election 2012.”

This is an area that needs much additional discussion and analysis. Why are so many Jewish fat cats such pro-Israel Zionists? Why so much money involved? What is in it for them? In the past, I have suggested that organized Zionism provides some power-seeking advantage to these guys. Alas, I seem to be talking to myself.