RJC, in unusual move, opposes Tea Party candidate.
Rand Paul, the Tea Party insurgent who was the upset victor in last week’s Kentucky Republican Senate primary, could be the biggest headache yet for a Republican Party that hopes to capitalize on the populist surge without getting tainted by the angry movement’s extremists.
While some political observers say Paul’s strong pro-Israel views could be a magnet for Jewish campaign givers, even some ardent Jewish Republicans are worried about what they see as the political newcomer’s views on U.S. foreign policy and his positions on issues such as civil rights. All of which led the Republican Jewish Coalition to oppose his candidacy for the nomination and, in an unusual move, to spurn him now that he is the party’s standard- bearer.
“Rand Paul is outside the comfort level of a lot of people in the Jewish community, and in many ways outside of where the Republican Party is on many critical issues,” said Matt Brooks, the RJC executive director, adding that leaders of his group worked on behalf of Paul’s primary opponent, Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson.
Brooks called Paul a “neo-isolationist” and pointed to positions like his strong opposition to federal legislation barring discrimination by private businesses, although after last week’s storm of controversy he insists he would not vote to repeal the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
University of Florida political scientist Kenneth Wald said Paul is the leading edge of a Tea Party movement that is “a huge problem pointing right at the heart of the Republican Party” — and now the most prominent figure in a churning, amorphous movement that could badly undermine the party’s outreach to Jewish voters.
Jewish Democrats, battered by recent controversies over the Obama administration’s handling of the Israel issue, couldn’t be happier.
“This is manna from heaven for us,” said Ira Forman, CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC). “And it’s not just in Kentucky; like Sarah Palin, Rand Paul is going to be very good for Jewish Democrats.”
But a prominent GOP strategist said it all depends on how the GOP responds to the grass-roots surge that has energized the Tea Party movement.
“The two elements that I see that are consistent across the Tea Party movement are demands for lower taxes and smaller government,” said Lee Cowen, who was a fundraiser for former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney in the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. “Those are things a growing number of Jewish voters agree with.”
The Tea Party activists and their political passion offer a major opportunity for the Republicans as they seek to regain control of Congress and set the stage for the 2012 presidential election, he said.
“It’s just a grass-roots movement that’s still relatively disorganized,” he said. “It’s up to the Republicans to take advantage of it. The key will be to find ways to make this work with the Republican core.”
And a leading political scientist predicted that Paul’s ascendance could help pull a Tea Party movement with isolationist leanings closer to the pro-Israel orbit.
Johns Hopkins political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg said Rand Paul is a “godsend — he’s the sort of the person the Jewish community should be working with.”
Ginsberg says that much of the Tea Party movement is isolationist, and it includes “some who are seen as meshuganah,” or crazy.
But Paul represents a major opportunity for pro-Israel campaign givers to influence that movement, he said.
Ginsberg’s calculus applies only to campaign givers. Jewish voters “are still Democrats; it would take a major earthquake to upset that,” he said.
But with Jews making up a miniscule proportion of the overall electorate but a huge proportion of major campaign givers, any shift of Jewish money to the incipient Tea Party and its advocates could be significant in 2010, he said.
