In short, Jews vote the way they do because of millennia of tradition and cultural inclination, for many of the same reasons that Kansans vote Republican.

I don’t know whether Orthodox Jews vote less frequently, but I’ve never read anything that indicates that. The ones I know are very, very political.

As for the demographics, you are correct:

…the factor most likely to push Jews towards the GOP is not Israel but demographics – Orthodox Jews vote Republican at a much higher rate than non-Orthodox Jews and are also growing at a much faster clip than any other portion of the Jewish population. (I would, however, quibble with his point about intermarriage – studies have indicated that intermarried, unaffiliated Jews vote just as Democratic as other non-Orthodox Jews.)

So someday, Jews may indeed start to vote more Republican. But if that happens, it probably won’t be Israel that drives the shift. And it probably won’t become apparent for many years to come.

Is there any long-term demographic significance to the above statistics? I would hazard a guess that Orthodox and (for lack of a better term) quasi-Orthodox Jews who refer to themselves as Orthodox have more children than other American Jews, with the notable exception of ultra-Orthodox folks (see below). Assuming that their children absorb much of their politics, is it a stretch to think that a growing minority of American Jews might turn more conservative in the next few decades?

Apropos demographics but largely unrelated to conservative-liberal ethnoreligious splits, do ultra-Orthodox Jews participate much in the electoral process on a national level? I have a vague recollection that many in the largest cities vote or lobby (or both) for local district pols and officials, but also that others shun the political process entirely, and very few are particularly enamored of federal politics. Is this way off in (pun not intended) left field?

This became the way most reform and Conservative Jews defined themselves and their associative groups.

the tragedy is that as the world has changed and the old European monarchical-clerical Right has disappeared and the Left is now the great threat to Jews, they are so self- and group-identified with teh Left, they refuse to see it. They see evangelical Christians as a threat, which is absurd, and don’t take the lesson of leftists marching in support of Palestinian jihad.

What about the lives and attitudes of Sephardic Jews, who lived in Arab countries for millennia? Or the Jews of pre-Czarist nineteenth century Ukraine in shtetls, who tended to be very poor? I’m not at all sure they had any sort of superior attitude; the shtetl Jews in particular were for the most part fairly downtrodden.

Isn’t Jewish humor quite self-deprecating? And the “chosen people” concept is often very misunderstood to mean a sense of superiority, which it does not mean.

However, for a number of reasons that are not well understood (but about which people have many theories), once Jews are given the opportunity to enter all professions, they often excel in certain professions (for example, look at science and Nobel Prizes). This isn’t about a sense of superiority, this is about actual achievement outside what would be expected for their numbers. In and of itself, that can cause resentment.

But I do believe there is some self inflicted damage. Discourse has never been a Jewish strong suit. One of the negative products of their success is a level of righteousness that almost borders on professing a predestined racial superiority.

Of course, in being a minority population wherever they’ve settled…this has not served them well. Many say that this brash lack of discourse is the result of years of oppression. I believe that argument to be very much similar to the chicken and the egg.

I continue to support Israel’s right to exist….as to me…it is a civilized oasis surrounded by ignorance and barbarism.

My hope is that the Jewish people see the warning signs around them…and are not blinded by the light of their own perceived greatness.