For all the comment it has generated, one aspect of the Gingrich campaign that has gone undiscussed is its extraordinary relationship with Jews. All at once, he is completely dependent on them, pandering to them, and demonizing them.
He's dependent because a right-wing Jewish billionaire, who's made his money in casinos, is almost single-handedly keeping his campaign afloat. The $10 million that Sheldon and Miriam Adelson of Las Vegas have fed Gingrich's Super PAC resurrected his candidacy in South Carolina, then spared him from an even more humiliating defeat in Florida. In fact, since Gingrich has evidently held on to most of the second installment of their lucre, the Adelsons are effectively keeping his candidacy going going forward.
That a candidate attempting to appeal to the Christian right, who wraps himself in American values and virtues, is funding himself from poker chips and roulette tables might seem odd, but of course it's no stranger than the willingness of many evangelicals to overlook Gingrich's marital history. In the end, it seems, character is quite secondary.
Apart from making robo-calls claiming Mitt Romney denied Kosher food to Holocaust survivors in Massachusetts nursing homes -- which turns out not to be true -- the pandering consists of Gingrich's ongoing "my Israel, right or wrong" stance, which appeals not only to Adelson -- who, like many right-wing American Jews, can espouse their belligerent views on the Israeli-Palestinian question from the safety of the United States -- but to the Christian right as well. Thus, Gingrich has resurrected the perennial, demagogic pledge to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something that, once in office, every president, Democrat and Republican alike, realizes is imprudent and inflammatory.
All this pro-Israel talk is likely to subside a bit now that the campaign has left Florida, with its motherlode of Jewish voters (most of them Democrats anyway) and moved on to heartland states with far smaller Jewish populations. But this is where the final component of Gingrich's strangely mixed attitude toward the Jews -- the demonization of them -- may raise its head even higher. Now, the target is Saul Alinsky.
Just who was this Saul Alinsky? Gingrich never explains, and for a reason: it's far more effective not to. Describing a bogey man only makes him less bogey-ish; merely conjuring him up is much more ominous. The particulars -- that Alinsky was a community organizer, that there was really nothing especially radical or ideological about him, that his tactics have sometimes been adopted by the right, that he died forty years ago -- are less important than the very sound of his name: foreign sounding, unmistakably Jewish (but not Israeli; it's Saul, not Shaul, and his last name wasn't Hebraicized, like, say, "Netanyahu"), vaguely alien, at least to those not familiar with Jews.
Gingrich is not an anti-Semite; for him, it would not just be odious, be suicidal. But his incantations of Alinsky's name are a classic anti-Semitic trope: the idea that left-wing, fundamentally unpatriotic and un-American Jews -- Gingrich contrasts Alinsky and his disciples with people who believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights -- lie somewhere in the shadows of our body politic, plotting conspiracies, pulling strings. In this instance, one of them is directing the President of the United States (along with, of course, the president's late Kenyan father) from the grave. In the darkest corners of American soul, where anti-Semitism still resides -- go online if you doubt it -- such suggestions resonate. One needn't be an anti-Semite to stir up anti-Semitism.
As a self-described serious historian -- serious enough to earn more than million and a half dollars from Fannie Mae for his "historical" services -- Gingrich should know that in trumpeting Alinsky's name around, he's taking a page out of Father Coughlin playbook. His inflammatory innuendo is so wrapped up in his philo-Semitic, pro-Likud slobbering that no one's even noticed. Or maybe it's that no one -- Democrats, Republicans, the press, and even Jews -- wants to say so. (The Anti-Defamation League is nowhere to be found.) Besides, useful idiots like the Adelsons are naïve and myopic enough to subsidize it!
Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy: Newt Gingrich Stands Up For 'Our Religions'
He knows Newt will never win but he can rile up the extreme right base enough to force Obama and Romey to double down on Israel, which is Mr. Adelson goal.
You noticed Obama pledging more money for Israel, right.
Mr. Adelson is getting Billions for Israel for a paltry $10 million. He's getting his support the old fashion American way: He's buying it!
My rhetoric is anti-islam as a political ideology, not anti-muslim in the least.
What a nasty article!! Your very attempt to tie everything from a billionaire's political support to a left wing 'bogeyman' to the fact that they are both Jewish (magically erasing any other consideration) is THE BIGGEST antisemitism! Added to the 'belligerent views' of the pro-Israel right, and the 'demagogic' thought of actually finally recognising Jerusalem (even simply the western part of it) as Israel's capital by moving the US embassy there as the law has provided for for many years already, and you leave your stance crystal clear. Anti-Gingrich is one thing, anti-Israel maybe another, but borderline anti-semitic should be a BIG red line!!
Do you know anything about Sheldon Adelson? Do you really think he is a naive idiot? Do you think he dosen't know exactly what he is doing backing Newt? He will back (buy) anyone to help him achieve his goals for Israel. He loves the religious right and the money they send to Israel. Sheldon has been playing politics in Israel for years. He has Bibi in his pocket. Adelson is just using Newt because he can. Before you write an article like this you should do your homework.
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Uh, aren't Super PACs banned from coordinating with the candidate? Silly of me, I know, to expect the Rs to follow any rules, laws, etc., but still...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zofymm3QSM&feature=share
Bethlehem Catholic Priest Ibrahim Shomali said, "I am here, born here, and my ID says I am from Bethlehem" about U.S. presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's claim in December that Palestinians are an "invented people". Shomali speaks for his congregation in opposition to Israel's settlements and the Separation Wall in the West Bank. He spoke to the Run Across Palestine's media team yesterday - follow the Run Across Palestine at http://www.runacrosspalestine.org/
http://www.examiner.com/bloomington-economic-policy-in-springfield/good-capitalism-vs-bad-capitalism
I mean, I ain't heard that there name all too much. "Saul"...sounds like one of them people that are REAL Jewish---which means that they kind of seem "different" to me. And I hate different.
But if you change "left wing" to "right wing", the Huffington Post will support such a theory all the way.
/sarcasm