Are Republicans exploiting Jewish voters?

Nancy Pelosi and Eric Cantor are having an election year spat. Liberal non-Jewish mom and Conservative Jewish dad are fighting again over their favorite child, Jews.

Pelosi claims that Republicans are talking about Israel all the time, that Romney is visiting Israel, to ignore from the fact that Republicans’ one goal is to make rich people and their corporations richer. This is an idea that doesn’t jive with most Jewish people, who, having gone to college, aren’t political fucking idiots and vote independently. To ignore the fact that nobody likes Mitt Romney, except maybe his mother and possibly his wife, and that Mitt Romney ignores political details like a closeted gay Republican ignores his homosexual feelings.

“That’s how they’re being exploited,” Pelosi said. “And they’re smart people. “They follow these issues. But they have to know the facts. And the fact is that President Obama has been the strongest person in terms of sanctions on Iran, which is important to Israel. He’s been the strongest person.”

The strongest person. IN THE WHOLE WORLD EVER. That’s what Pelosi meant when she ended her statement quite vaguely.

Cantor, the one conservative Jew in a sea of liberal, progressive Jewish people, retorted quite nicely:

“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,” Cantor said. “Such thinking diminishes the importance of issues affecting Jews everywhere.”

Yeah. It IS patronizing to assume that all Jewish people truly care about is Israel, that they vote based primarily on American-Israeli policy, that they’re possibly Israel-firsters. Israel affects Jews everywhere. Not Israelis. Or American Jews. Even if Cantor thinks these words are interchangeable.

And politics is definitely not about exploiting/pandering to your constituencies, blowing smoke out  your ass to get votes like a crackhead looking for his next fix.

//HuffPo