Writing for The Weekly Standard, Ami Horowitz asks if the Jewish vote will help George W. Bush recapture the White House in 2004:

[…] Jews are beginning to scrutinize the Democratic positions on Israel. The most problematic issue for the Democrats is their inability to come to grips with the failure of the Oslo Accords. It is this refusal to let this chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian saga die that has led them to embrace a notion that can be only described as “solutionism.” It is the claim that a solution is near, if only Israel would be more flexible, and if not a solution will be forced. In the face of a steady stream of bus bombings and the mass-murder of civilians that Israel has endured for the last three years, this notion is understandably unpopular with many Jewish voters.

Well, yes, mass-murdering civilians is “unpopular” with the Jews (a position I sincerely hope transcends ritual circumcision and overpriced deli meats, by the way), but for my money, the “Israel Question” is most certainly not the “most problematic” issue facing the Democrats vis-a-vis the “Jewish” vote — at least, not with respect to my vote. No, the “most problematic issue for the Democrats,” as I see it, is that they tend to, y’know, vote Democratic on the majority of issues. Which by my best estimate makes them wrong 75% of the time. Couple this with their leadership’s near-obsessive obeissance to the dangerous fantasy of “internationalizing” our foreign policy, and you’ve got plenty of lunacy right here, in domestic policy, from which informed Jews will rightly recoil. Which is not to say a candidate’s position on relations with Israel is not important — of course the US should throw its support behind the one functioning democracy in the Middle East, and of course Americans should insist on the rights of Israelis to protect themselves from brainwashed schoolkids rigged by cynical and cowardly handlers to explode in front of falafel stands — just that it’s hardly the most important issue.

And then there’s the Jimmy Carter factor. As Horowitz notes,

John Kerry has been conspicuously silent on many issues that could affect Israel, but what he has said bodes ill: one harbinger could be his statement that he would consider Jimmy Carter and James Baker–two of the most anti-Israel policy makers of the last 30 years–as envoys to the Middle East.

That Kerry would even consider Carter for so much as a cocktail party invite is enough to make me question his judgment. But again, this has as much to do with Mr. Peanut’s ferocious distrust of America as a world power as it does with his loathsome “friendship” with Arafat. And let’s not forget his Castro coddling. No, one doesn’t have to be Jewish to know where Kerry and Carter would likely lead us.

And now that I’m a new dad, I prefer not to think about that. Whenever I can help it, that is…