The Democrat Party???s efforts to, shall we say, refine its appeal continued in an interview House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) gave to Al Hunt for Bloomberg News. Pelosi was confident that President Obama would do well with the Jewish vote, even though Mitt Romney has been hitting him hard over his policy toward Israel, and no one has forgotten Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu patiently schooling Obama on the importance of Israel???s current borders.
???He has been there over and over again,??? Pelosi said of Obama???s many journeys to Israel, which exist entirely in the fevered imagination of Nancy Pelosi. Obama hasn???t visited Israel as President. As far as anyone knows, he???s been there twice, once as a Senator and once during his 2008 presidential campaign.
But the money quote came when Pelosi unveiled her Really Deep Thoughts about the true reason for the strong pro-Israel stance of the Republican Party: ???You know, many of the Republicans are using Israel as an excuse, what they really want are tax cuts for the wealthy. So Israel, that can be one reason they put forth.???
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Minority Leader of the opposition party in the House of Representatives. She didn???t win that position in a random drawing. They voted her in. She even had a challenger last time, Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina. He???s retiring after this term.
Some listeners might parse this dimwitted exposition of crude class-warfare ideology and conclude Pelosi was saying that Republican Jews are greedy fat cats who use Israel as an excuse to conceal their lust for undeserved tax cuts. The more benevolent interpretation is that she thinks Republican Jews are hapless dupes who blindly vote for the Party of Tax Cuts For the Wealthy because they say nice things about Israel.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who happens to be the only Jewish Republican in the House at present, subscribed to the latter interpretation and responded angrily to Pelosi: ???It is both patronizing and deeply insulting for Nancy Pelosi to suggest any Jew is 'exploited' for their political beliefs or that support for Israel is somehow an 'excuse' for anything. Such thinking diminishes the importance of issues affecting Jews everywhere.???
Class warfare and identity politics: two awful flavors that become even more toxic when mixed together.
