One GOP Endorsement That Greene Will Not Get
Hailed by the president and congratulated by prominent Republicans, the northwest Georgia congressional candidate has been rejected by the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Dave Schechter is a veteran journalist whose career includes writing and producing reports from Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East.
I do not live in Georgia’s 14th congressional district.
I’m not here to tell the voters in the 14th district who to support on Nov. 3.
If it is the will of the majority to elect Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene to the United States House of Representatives, so be it. In this country, the right of the people to choose their representatives is fundamental.
The 14th anchors the northwest corner of Georgia. The district’s Jewish population is tiny, less than 0.03 percent when estimated in 2014. There is one active synagogue, Rodeph Sholom Congregation in Rome.
The seat opened when Republican Rep. Tom Graves decided not to seek re-election. Given that the 14th is one of the nation’s most conservative districts, odds are that Greene will defeat Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal and in January place her left hand on a Bible, raise her right hand, and swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Greene is controversial because of who she considers an enemy and who a friend.
After the June 9 primary — in which she was the leading vote-getter — the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition Matt Brooks told the Jewish Insider that the RJC would not support Greene if she won the Aug. 11 runoff.
Brooks said in a July 20 statement that “The importance of the outcome of this run-off is too great for us to stay on the sidelines” because Greene “would take our party in the wrong direction.” The RJC endorsed her opponent. Greene won the runoff.
The RJC national office has reconfirmed to me that it will not back Greene in the general election.
In the interest of the space allotted this column, we’ll move past Greene’s remarks about Muslims and African Americans and, because this is a Jewish newspaper focused on metro Atlanta and Georgia, consider what she has said about Jews.
Readers can decide for themselves whether those comments are anti-Jewish. Starting with, George Soros is a “Nazi.”
Soros is 90 years old, Jewish, a Holocaust survivor (he was 9 when World War II began and 14 when it ended), an emigre to the United States from Hungary, and a billionaire who has financially backed liberal causes in Hungary, in the United States, and globally.
Some on the right become apoplectic at the mention of his name.
POLITICO reviewed hours of Greene’s Facebook videos, finding this: “George Soros says dark forces have been awakened by Trump’s win. I don’t think so. George Soros is the piece of crap that turned in — he’s a Jew — he turned in his own people over to the Nazis.” Never mind that this is a falsehood.
POLITICO also reported: “In February 2019, Greene replied to a tweet that included several memes accusing Soros of being part of a secret totalitarian world government. One picture showed Soros as a vampire who controls ‘every single Democrat politician.’ In her reply, Greene called Soros ‘the Nazi himself trying to continue what was not finished.’”
The RJC also referred to Greene’s habit of “promoting bizarre political conspiracy theories,” namely those promulgated by the right-wing fringe known as QAnon. In a 2017 YouTube video she said, “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it.”
In QAnon world, that cabal includes Soros and, for good measure, the Rothschild family, a bogeyman for peddlers of anti-Jewish hate dating back to the 1815 Battle of Waterloo and a pamphlet authored by a mysterious “Satan” that accused Nathan Rothschild of making a fortune on the London exchange with early information of the French defeat.
Then there are her photographs with Chester Doles, a Georgian with a history of white supremacist activity. He described her on social media as “part of the Q movement” and a “Good friend to have.” Greene’s campaign has called questions about Doles “silly and the same type of sleazy attacks the Fake News Media levels against President Trump.”
The day after her runoff victory, Trump hailed Greene on Twitter, calling her a “future Republican Star” and “a real WINNER.” Among Republicans congratulating Greene were Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Rep. Doug Collins, the frontrunners heading toward Georgia’s Nov. 3 all-comers Senate primary.
But not the Republican Jewish Coalition. Not now and not in November.
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