From the Liveblog of
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Jewish Republicans join conservatives opposing Trump
Prominent Jewish Republicans are among dozens of conservatives in the US national security community who are speaking out against Donald Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
A letter posted yesterday by some 60 influential conservatives in think tanks and alumni of Republican administrations lists the ways they say the billionaire real estate magnate would “make America less safe,” including “hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric” that “undercuts the seriousness of combating Islamic radicalism.”
It also accuses him of contempt for neighbors such as Mexico and allies like Japan while admiring dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The letter calls Trump feckless, saying he “swings from isolationism to military adventurism within the space of one sentence.”
“As committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a Party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head,” says the letter posted on “War on The Rocks” a conservative foreign policy and national security news and opinion website.
“We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office.”
The letter is the brainchild of Eliot Cohen, a counselor in the State Department under George W. Bush.
A good portion of the signatories are Jewish members of the conservative national community, including Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary under president George W. Bush; Max Boot, a senior foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., when he was the 2008 GOP presidential candidate; Eric Edelman, an undersecretary of defense under George W. Bush; and Dov Zakheim, a deputy undersecretary of defense under president Ronald Reagan.
— JTA
The Times of Israel Community.