Don’t miss Paul Mirengoff’s consideration of Coach George and Etty Allen here, or Ed Morrissey’s related post here. Then check out Jon Henke’s research on the source and the animus underlying the sudden concern with Senator Allen’s ethnic roots here. There is something deeply rotten in the fringes of the Democratic Party that is moving directly to its heart.
JOHN adds: Our own Senator Norm Coleman has weighed in on this controversy, adding some facts about Webb’s campaign of which I had been unaware:
There are those, for whatever reason, who wish to suggest that Senator Allen’s Jewish heritage is an issue in this campaign. I find it morally reprehensible and ethically bankrupt. Senator Allen’s opponent and his opponent’s supporters have engaged in a pattern of intimidation and intolerance that I am saddened to see in this country. In their primary campaign, Mr. Webb and his [supporters] were responsible for a flier that contained a caricature of his Jewish opponent – complete with bigoted and intolerant visions of an individual with a hooked nose and money pouring from his pockets – and calling the person the ‘anti-Christ of outsourcing.’
Former Naval Secretary Webb’s campaign is sailing on dirty and dangerous waters when it plays the religion card. The voters of Virginia should sink this vessel and wash away any effort to question Senator Allen’s faith or heritage.
Meanwhile, reader Andrew Szente points out that the generally-respected Roll Call, in its “Heard on the Hill” column, directed this gratuitous bit of snark at Senator Allen. It was inserted into a report on an appearance by pop singer Jewel related to breast cancer:
What we really wanted to know, of course, was: Which way do you lean, Jewel, left or right? “I’m down the middle,” she told HOH. “I believe in the right to chew tobacco and have abortions. What does that make me?”
Hmm, a tobacco-chewing moderate maybe? Sort of like a cross between conservative Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), who’s trying to kick the habit of dipping (since, really, are there any Jews who dip?), and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a liberal on many fronts, who incidentally ended up running to Jewel’s rescue to escort the star and her entourage through security checkpoints in the Capitol.
Is it too much to say that anti-Semitism is rapidly being mainstreamed by the Democratic Party?
UPDATE: Ed Lasky broadly considers “The Democratic Party and the Jews” in his column at The American Thinker.
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