Blaming The Jews For Not Loving Palin

The Jennifer Rubin piece has already been brutally taken down by Jon Chait, but David Corn sharpens it. He argues that Rubin's point is that:

Jews -- especially Jewish women -- just don't get real people. It's not merely that they value academic-proven intelligence in leaders and that they generally don't cotton to conservatives; they hold true Americans in disdain.

I can see why a conservative anti-Semite would want to present such a case. But for a Jewish author to do so in a Jewish (neoconservative) magazine is a bit odd -- and perhaps a touch dangerous. Not that the masses read Commentary. ("It's beyond strange to see this argument explicitly targeted at Jews, in a Jewish publication of all places," Chait writes.) Rubin's piece is reminiscent of the age-old complaint about Jews: they're cosmopolitan, they think they're superior, they're self-alienated from mainstream society. The problem with Sarah Palin for Jews and non-Jews is Sarah Palin. But Rubin contends the true problem is with the Jews -- their insularity, their elitism, their conceits. A Jew can only hope that this article does not come to haunt her.

I worry about elements of proto-fascism becoming mainstream in the GOP.

But there is something particularly disturbing about the way in which neoconservatives, in their alliance with the Christianist heartland, increasingly argue for a strong and unchecked charismatic leader in the Palin/Bush mold, a disdain for reason in political life and a yearning for what Rubin calls an "instinctual skill set" in a leader. You can see why Leo Strauss, the neocon mentor, backed Mussolini at the beginning.

Most American Jews, of course, retain a respect for learning, compassion for the other, and support for minorities (Jews, for example, are the ethnic group most sympathetic to gay rights.) But the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing - that celebrates and believes in government torture, endorses the pulverization of Gazans with glee, and wants to attack Iran - is something else.

Something much darker.