It Turns Out Conservative Jews Don’t Like Chris Christie Either

Surprise! A conservative Jew has attacked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over his state’s ban on conversion therapy. Turns out some conservative Jews think the ban is an attack on religious freedom. Because, you know, religious freedom means conservative Jews and Christians being able to force everybody to live by THEIR rules.

Conservatives act like this is a big deal, that conservatives act in unsurprising ways. Sometimes, making a too-big deal of it also involves lying about it.

Newsmax, for example, manages to fail to mention entirely that a piece in The Jewish Press , “Chris Christie and the LGBT Agenda,” is an op-ed piece and not an editorial representative of the views of The Jewish Press itself. Instead, Newsmax claims that “a prominent Jewish publication” has slammed Gov. Christie.

That is an outright lie. The Jewish Press did not slam Christie. Joseph Aron slammed Chris Christie. In an op-ed.

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But even had The Jewish Press slammed Chris Christie – which it did not – it must be kept in mind that it is politically and religiously conservative, and that it caters to the orthodox community – facts which Newsmax ommitted.

No, Newsmax, big news would be J Street attacking Gov. Christie.

In fact, Jewish support for any Republican position is a bit – shall we say – rare. Even Joseph Aron, busily condemning Chris Christie, ends his piece with this admission:

Kudos to Agudath Israel for being the only policy organization to issue a press release condemning the new law.

Agudath Israel is – yes – a conservative Jewish organization affiliated with orthodox Jewish political parties in Israel.

As I said, rare. J Street reported before the 2012 elections,

According to Gallup, Jews are the most liberal religious group in America – and more than twice as liberal as the country as a whole. In Gallup’s last release of ideology by religion in January 2010, Jews (43 percent liberal / 20 percent conservative) were more liberal than Catholics (19 percent liberal / 39 percent conservative), Protestants/other Christians (16 percent liberal / 46 percent conservative), and no religion/atheist/agnostic (39 percent liberal / 19 percent conservative). Looking beyond self-identified ideology, other measures reveal a very progressive constituency:

• Gallup found in 2007 that 77 percent of Jews opposed the Iraq war, far more than any other religious group.
• In March 2012, the Public Religion Research Institute’s (PRRI) poll of American Jews showed that 93 percent believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, 81 percent support gay marriage, 81 percent support raising taxes on people making over $1 million per year, and 73 percent believe our system unfairly favors the wealthy.

And as far as the GOP itself goes,

Jews do not identify with political conservatives and the Republican party. According to J Street’s 2010 election night survey, Glenn Beck (66 percent unfavorable), the Tea Party movement (74 percent unfavorable), and George W. Bush (73 percent unfavorable) all have dramatically poor standing with American Jews. In the March 2012 PRRI poll of American Jews, assessments of Mitt Romney (67 percent unfavorable) and the Republican party (76 percent unfavorable) demonstrate that Jews continue to express intense opposition to the Republican party and its current leader.

That conservative Jews stand with conservative Christians on culture war issues is not all that surprising. And it is somewhat misleading to simply refer to the Jewish Press as “a prominent Jewish publication.” The Jewish Press has a weekly circulation of 50,000.

Having a choice has never been popular with religious conservatives. That is why they refer to people who like to choose as “heretics” (heresy being from the Greek word for “choice”). In other words, the freedom to choose is itself an attack on religious freedom – the freedom of religious conservatives to tell us all how to live our lives – and, well, you know – give us no choice.

Joseph Aron seems confused by the issues, which only goes to show that Jewish conservatives can be as troubled by the world of facts as Christian conservatives:

Thus anyone under 18 struggling with unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction is precluded from receiving the help he or she may want even with parental consent. At the same time, parents are allowed to use their discretion to seek professional help to affirm their child’s same-sex attraction.

Oh dear.

So the New Jersey law is “an assault on religious freedom as well as on the right of parents to utilize their discretion is raising their children. It also unfairly denies young people the opportunity to pursue help they may desperately want.”

Actually, it prevents parents from messing with their kids heads because parents think what they “want” is more important than “what is.”

Joseph Aron, like conservative Christians, has difficulty understanding anything that is not black and white, you know, either “good” or “evil.” So he is troubled that Christie isn’t walking the straight and narrow, if you’ll pardon the expression:

For a governor who as recently as a year ago vetoed a same sex marriage bill in his state, this latest stance is ironic and highly disappointing.

More startling yet is that Jospeh Aron thinks conversion therapy has achieved “some degree of success.” I think the APA would love to know about this success. I suppose some minister or rabbi said so. You know, medical and psychiatric experts.

It is a pretty sad commentary on the state of conservative politics in the United States that conservatives have invent support for their positions. We hear constantly how conservatives are the voice of America, how Americans overwhelmingly support their culture war agenda.

Truth is, the more they claim support, the less that support exists in fact. The fact is that America has become a socially liberal country if it has not always been so. The result is that conservative politics increasingly become the soap-box of religious zealots and political ideologues, making crazy mainstream.

Most liberals will not view Governor Christie as a political moderate or centrist. But Governor Christie is much close to mainstream American thinking these days than any other Republican politician thinking about the presidency, and it is ultimately futile for conservatives to try to will Christie out of existence.

Christie has refused to make himself a political dinosaur and no, they will not forgive him for this. But neither can they change the fact that their own pursuit of ideological purity has succeeded in mainstreaming crazy at the expense of broad voter appeal. His pursuit of broad voter appeal will likely not give Christie the election in 2016, should he choose to run, and this is because, ultimately, many liberals most likely agree with the analysis of Daniel Greenfield in his blog on The Jewish Press, that “Unfortunately he’s [Christie] also opportunistic, unprincipled and completely cynical.”

In 2012, it was the least crazy-seeming of Republican candidates who got the nod and it will likely be the same again in 2016, because the GOP establishment, at least, recognizes that crazy may be big in Iowa, but it does not sell on a national scale. And no, that does not make the GOP establishment good guys. It just makes them a wee bit more cognizant of reality than their base. The sooner conservative Jews and Christians recognize this, the sooner they will become political relevant again.

For Christie, it all comes down to how many people on both sides of the political spectrum he can fool into thinking he has something to offer them that nobody else is offering. Given that 2016 will likely see a liberal Hilary Clinton running against a bunch of religious fanatics, that seems a forlorn hope indeed.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.