Republican Jewish Coalition

  Republican presidential contenders took a brief respite from canvassing early battleground states Wednesday to come here to court Jewish activists and donors, with Newt Gingrich reveling in his newfound status as a front-runner and Rick Perry trying to clarify his stance on aid to Israel. Gingrich was bathed in applause from the crowd at a forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition. In the morning, he spoke at a gathering of conservative activists in Virginia before appearing at the forum, where he, like the five other candidates in attendance, denounced the Obama administration's Middle East policy.

WOODSTOCK, Vt. - Republican vice president nominee Paul Ryan sharply criticized Democrats for removing a passage from their 2012 platform stating that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel - language that was part of the party document in 2008. “This is tragic,” Ryan said during a Wednesday morning appearance on "Fox & Friends. " "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Mitt Romney and I are very clear on this…. What is so tragic about this is that this is one of the few issues where the Republican Party and the Democratic Party agreed.”  “Our two party platforms were emphatic about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel, the issues surrounding the right of return, and Hamas," he said.  The status of Jerusalem, which is the legal capital of Israel, is a central point of dispute in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Despite speculation every four years that American Jews are on the verge of dropping their allegiance to the Democratic Party, the Jewish population has grown more Democratic and liberal than it was throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, according to a new, long-term study of voting behavior. For an extremely small population - less than 2% of the American total - Jews have long attracted a disproportionate amount of attention from political commentators.  Conservative intellectuals predicted for years that Jewish voters would become more Republican over time as the community became wealthier and more assimilated.  More recently, the basis for the predictions shifted to the contention that strains over policy toward Israel would push Jews toward the GOP. At the presidential level, however, the opposite appears to have happened, according to the new study, by Democratic pollsters Mark Mellman and Aaron Strauss and University of Florida political scientist Kenneth D. Wald.

JERUSALEM - Mitt Romney has rarely missed an opportunity to argue that he would be a better friend to Israel than President Obama. He has pounded the president on the issue of Iran, saying he has failed to champion sanctions crippling enough to prevent Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon. He has accused Obama of speaking at the United Nations as if "our closest ally in the Middle East was the problem. " And he has spoken in glowing and deferential terms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - "Bibi," as he referred to him - whose frictions with Obama have at times burst into the open.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Thursday that it is a “gross overstatement” to suggest that President Obama did serious damage to his support from Jewish voters when he proposed last week that Israel’s 1967 borders should be the starting point for peace talks with Palestinians. She also lashed out at a Republican Jewish organization that has been critical of her, denouncing what she said was the group’s decision to put partisanship ahead of its support for Israel.

As the immediate past president of Temple Beth Israel, I found Mark Arax's description of the politics of the Fresno Jewish community overreaching and flawed ("The Valley's Not So Civil War," Feb. 5). The article laments that Temple Beth Israel has exhibited "its own kind of madness" post-9/11, and that pro-Israel advocates have cozied up with "Christian Zionists" to support Israel and the war in Iraq while abandoning the temple's history of advancing "liberal causes." Our synagogue has had a long history of supporting Israel.

America needs to "up our game"? President Obama is still "on the bench," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie argued Wednesday. Christie leveled a blistering critique of the president as a failed leader in his luncheon remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition's candidate forum in Washington. It's not that he objected to Obama's major address in Kansas Tuesday. In fact, he said he thought it was a fine message for the times. The problem was the messenger. Christie zeroed in on a single line, in which Obama said that America needed to "meet the moment.

Seeking to brush up his foreign policy credentials, Mitt Romney will travel to Israel this summer on a trip that will highlight his warm personal relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and potentially build his support among Jewish and evangelical voters. A campaign official confirmed that the trip, which had been rumored for months and was first reported by the New York Times on Monday, will include a visit with Netanyahu. Romney's team is not yet releasing any other details, including whether it will be a component of his trip to London to attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

Though the U.S. presidential primaries are still a year from now, a different sort of contest is underway in Israel. Beginning Saturday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour will be the third potential GOP presidential candidate to visit the Jewish state since the first of the year, and the second during the protests in neighboring Egypt. Barbour will arrive on the heels of Mike Huckabee, who spent much of the week touring the country, and Mitt Romney, who swung through in January. And like Romney and Huckabee, Barbour is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and tour some holy sites.

WOODSTOCK, Vt. - Republican vice president nominee Paul Ryan sharply criticized Democrats for removing a passage from their 2012 platform stating that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel - language that was part of the party document in 2008. “This is tragic,” Ryan said during a Wednesday morning appearance on "Fox & Friends. " "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Mitt Romney and I are very clear on this…. What is so tragic about this is that this is one of the few issues where the Republican Party and the Democratic Party agreed.”  “Our two party platforms were emphatic about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel, the issues surrounding the right of return, and Hamas," he said.  The status of Jerusalem, which is the legal capital of Israel, is a central point of dispute in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Despite speculation every four years that American Jews are on the verge of dropping their allegiance to the Democratic Party, the Jewish population has grown more Democratic and liberal than it was throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, according to a new, long-term study of voting behavior. For an extremely small population - less than 2% of the American total - Jews have long attracted a disproportionate amount of attention from political commentators.  Conservative intellectuals predicted for years that Jewish voters would become more Republican over time as the community became wealthier and more assimilated.  More recently, the basis for the predictions shifted to the contention that strains over policy toward Israel would push Jews toward the GOP. At the presidential level, however, the opposite appears to have happened, according to the new study, by Democratic pollsters Mark Mellman and Aaron Strauss and University of Florida political scientist Kenneth D. Wald.

Seeking to brush up his foreign policy credentials, Mitt Romney will travel to Israel this summer on a trip that will highlight his warm personal relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and potentially build his support among Jewish and evangelical voters. A campaign official confirmed that the trip, which had been rumored for months and was first reported by the New York Times on Monday, will include a visit with Netanyahu. Romney's team is not yet releasing any other details, including whether it will be a component of his trip to London to attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

  Republican presidential contenders took a brief respite from canvassing early battleground states Wednesday to come here to court Jewish activists and donors, with Newt Gingrich reveling in his newfound status as a front-runner and Rick Perry trying to clarify his stance on aid to Israel. Gingrich was bathed in applause from the crowd at a forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition. In the morning, he spoke at a gathering of conservative activists in Virginia before appearing at the forum, where he, like the five other candidates in attendance, denounced the Obama administration's Middle East policy.

America needs to "up our game"? President Obama is still "on the bench," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie argued Wednesday. Christie leveled a blistering critique of the president as a failed leader in his luncheon remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition's candidate forum in Washington. It's not that he objected to Obama's major address in Kansas Tuesday. In fact, he said he thought it was a fine message for the times. The problem was the messenger. Christie zeroed in on a single line, in which Obama said that America needed to "meet the moment.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Thursday that it is a “gross overstatement” to suggest that President Obama did serious damage to his support from Jewish voters when he proposed last week that Israel’s 1967 borders should be the starting point for peace talks with Palestinians. She also lashed out at a Republican Jewish organization that has been critical of her, denouncing what she said was the group’s decision to put partisanship ahead of its support for Israel.

Though the U.S. presidential primaries are still a year from now, a different sort of contest is underway in Israel. Beginning Saturday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour will be the third potential GOP presidential candidate to visit the Jewish state since the first of the year, and the second during the protests in neighboring Egypt. Barbour will arrive on the heels of Mike Huckabee, who spent much of the week touring the country, and Mitt Romney, who swung through in January. And like Romney and Huckabee, Barbour is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and tour some holy sites.

JERUSALEM - Mitt Romney has rarely missed an opportunity to argue that he would be a better friend to Israel than President Obama. He has pounded the president on the issue of Iran, saying he has failed to champion sanctions crippling enough to prevent Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon. He has accused Obama of speaking at the United Nations as if "our closest ally in the Middle East was the problem. " And he has spoken in glowing and deferential terms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - "Bibi," as he referred to him - whose frictions with Obama have at times burst into the open.

President Obama had a quick, blunt response Thursday to Republican charges that he's engaged in a foreign policy of "appeasement. " (see video below) "Ask Osama bin Laden," he told reporters at the White House on Thursday. Appeasement was the word of the day Wednesday as six Republican presidential candidates spoke at a forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington. It was most often used with regard to Iran, although some said it applied to Obama's broader foreign policy.

As the immediate past president of Temple Beth Israel, I found Mark Arax's description of the politics of the Fresno Jewish community overreaching and flawed ("The Valley's Not So Civil War," Feb. 5). The article laments that Temple Beth Israel has exhibited "its own kind of madness" post-9/11, and that pro-Israel advocates have cozied up with "Christian Zionists" to support Israel and the war in Iraq while abandoning the temple's history of advancing "liberal causes." Our synagogue has had a long history of supporting Israel.