At least one PAC still thinks peoples' bubbies will decide the election. The Republican Jewish Coalition, a 23 year-old group that push-polled TNR's own Jonathan Cohn earlier this year, is spending over $1 million on an ad that uses Hillary Clinton's words against Obama. The group has also been running inflammatory advertisements in Jewish newspapers, which link Barack Obama to Jeremiah Wright and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Obama campaign has blacklisted the RJC's surrogates in response to the mailings.
The RJC gets its money through several GOP megadonors--many of whom were key backers of the 527 group Freedom's Watch before it nearly collapsed this spring. Perhaps smarting from that experience (and large financial losses), imperious casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Ari Fleischer, and Paul Singer seem to have downsized their efforts and become RJC bundlers instead. Other key donors include Tom Delay money man Fred Zeidman, Colorado megadeveloper Larry Mizel, and Elliot Broidy, an influential financier once dubbed "the mystery man of the Israeli economy."
According to Politico, Obama has dispatched Joe Biden to offset the RJC's scare tactics by--among other things--"making jokes in Yiddish."
--Barron YoungSmith