Blatant Texas Republican Anti-Semitism

This is REALLY disgusting. But unfortunately it is all too typical of the racist Republican Party today. This comes from an email from the National Jewish Democratic Council:

NJDC Calls on Republican Leadership to Condemn Actions of Texas GOP Leaders

Marc R. Stanley of Dallas, Texas, Chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) and David A. Harris, President and CEO of NJDC, jointly called upon national Republican leadership to condemn the actions of key leaders of the Republican Party of Texas who have sought to oust the Jewish Republican Speaker of the Texas House apparently on the basis of his faith.

This invocation of religion and dialogue asserting that “Jews and other non-Christians need not apply for GOP leadership positions in Texas” is completely unacceptable and has no place in our public discourse. Unfortunately, this type of extremist rhetoric is nothing new; we have seen certain leaders and members of the Republican Party bring religion into the conversation repeatedly in previous election cycles.

Republican leaders cannot continue to sit idly by while the extremist factions of their Party continue to grow. National Republican leaders, including incoming House Majority Leader Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), must immediately condemn the actions of their fellow Party leaders and members and call on them to apologize for this well-documented, egregious behavior.

This is yet another example of how the agenda of the increasingly extremist and growing right wing simply does not reflect the values of the American Jewish community.

Let me be VERY clear here. Not only are the Texas Republicans showing blatant anti-Semitism within their own ranks, but what they are doing is blatantly un-American. The most un-American thing a politician can do is violate the Constitution, the founding document our Founding Fathers handed down to us. It says VERY clearly in our Constitution that there can be NO RELIGIOUS TESTS in our government. We have a nation that was founded on religious freedom and Separation of Church and State, and the Republicans are once again violating one of America's most cherished values.

But this isn't just happening in Texas. All over the country Republicans are showing racism and anti-Semitism routinely. There was the Republican leader in Indiana who told a group of Jews their opinion didn't matter because they made up only 2% of the population. He told them that only Christian prayers should be said at legislative sessions because Jews didn't matter. THAT violates the Constitution and is un-American and anti-Semitic as well.

And then there was the Delaware Pogrom where two non-Christian families, one Jewish one Muslim, were driven from a Delaware town by threats of violence from right wing Christian extremists. This incident reminds me of the pogroms my family left Russia to escape.

Then there were cases of Republican anti-Semitism in South Carolina, and in New York. And the national Republican organization GOPUSA had blatant anti-Semitism right on their website before people complained.

Of course Republican racism and anti-Semitism is nothing new. Teabaggers are not that much different from Richard Nixon when it comes to these two disgusting habits. This is amply illustrated by the recent release of some more nasty Nixon taps by the Nixon library.

The Republicans have been heading further and further into religious intolerance and un-American violations of the separation of church and state. This Texas incident is just the latest in a whole pattern of anti-Semitism. And to be fair, they are even more virulently anti-Muslim. Jews and Muslims are just not welcome in Republican America.


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