Obama Losing the ‘G-d Vote’, Backer Chaim Saban Losing Sleep

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
A7 News

Strong signs at the polls show that U.S. President Barack Obama is losing the “G-d vote” as Jewish and religious Christian voters flee, chapter and verse, to the Republican camp.

He won more support in the "Bible Belt" than John Kerry did in 2004, with one Ohio town giving President Obama 43 percent of the “G-d vote," 10 percent more more than the 39 percent who supported John Kerry, according to polling results cited by political analyst and reporter Salena Zito on the Townhall.com website. Democrats now have a “G-d vote” deficit. “It isn’t Armageddon yet, but it is the task of party activists to keep having broad, open and honest dialogue with the faith voters,” said Burns Strider, founding partner of the Eleison Group and former religious outreach director for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University, estimates that voters in 2008 “really seemed to understand ‘G-d talk’” through President Obama’s oratorical skills, but his actions now speak louder than words.

“What is at issue is the administration's new openness to the Muslim world while maintaining a very icy relationship with and directing harsh criticism towards the government of Israel,” explains Keystone College political science professor Jeff Brauer.

Another professor, Bert Rockman of Purdue University, told Townhall.com, “There is a general pulling-away from the Democrats because of anger about the current state of affairs and pessimism about the direction of the country.”

President Obama and his advisors launched a campaign last month to try to reverse the near-zero popularity for the president in Israel and the rapidly fading support among American Jews.

Israeli-American billionaire Chaim Saban, one of the biggest backers of the Democratic party, says he is suffering from insomnia because of the Obama administration.

He told Channel 10 television, “To say I don’t sleep easily with the current administration’s relationship to Israel would be an understatement. They are leftists, really left leftists, so far to the left there’s not much space left between them and the wall,” he said, referring to the president’s aides.

President Obama has invited Jewish leaders to the White House, including those outside of the left-wing J Street lobby, for discussions. Last Thursday, two Jewish advisers hosted a second meeting with Orthodox rabbis as well as leaders from the Conservative and Reform movements in an effort to turn around current polls that show the possibility that the Democrats might even lose their majority control of Congress in this November’s mid-term elections.

Policy advisor Dennis Ross, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, reminded the rabbis that there have been “manifestations of the change” of the administration’s tone since they met the first time a month ago.”

The split between President Obama and Israel has centered on the Iranian nuclear threat and the Obama administration’s acceptance of Palestinian Authority demands that Israel stop building for Jews in areas of Jerusalem that the PA claims as being part of a new Arab state it wants to create.

Virginia Conservative Rabbi Jack Moline said that President Obama invited rabbis who are popular in their communities but who are not outright opposed to him. However, not all of those who were invited left the meeting reassured.

Orthodox Rabbi Ephrem Goldberg of Florida said, "Among the rabbis, there was a diversity of those who support the administration policies and feel the message hasn't trickled down, and those who have problems with some of the policies.

"It's easy to repeat the phrases 'unbreakable bond' and 'shared values. We want to hear in no uncertain terms that Iran will not be allowed to go nuclear [and] that inevitably there will be an impasse” between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. “When that happens, will they only apply pressure to Israel, or have they learned something?"