The Jennifer Rubin piece has already been brutally taken down by Jon Chait, but David Corn sharpens it. He argues that Rubin's point is that:
Jews -- especially Jewish women -- just don't get real people. It's not merely that they value academic-proven intelligence in leaders and that they generally don't cotton to conservatives; they hold true Americans in disdain.
I can see why a conservative anti-Semite would want to present such a case. But for a Jewish author to do so in a Jewish (neoconservative) magazine is a bit odd -- and perhaps a touch dangerous. Not that the masses read Commentary. ("It's beyond strange to see this argument explicitly targeted at Jews, in a Jewish publication of all places," Chait writes.) Rubin's piece is reminiscent of the age-old complaint about Jews: they're cosmopolitan, they think they're superior, they're self-alienated from mainstream society. The problem with Sarah Palin for Jews and non-Jews is Sarah Palin. But Rubin contends the true problem is with the Jews -- their insularity, their elitism, their conceits. A Jew can only hope that this article does not come to haunt her.
I worry about elements of proto-fascism becoming mainstream in the GOP.
But there is something particularly disturbing about the way in which neoconservatives, in their alliance with the Christianist heartland, increasingly argue for a strong and unchecked charismatic leader in the Palin/Bush mold, a disdain for reason in political life and a yearning for what Rubin calls an "instinctual skill set" in a leader. You can see why Leo Strauss, the neocon mentor, backed Mussolini at the beginning.
Most American Jews, of course, retain a respect for learning, compassion for the other, and support for minorities (Jews, for example, are the ethnic group most sympathetic to gay rights.) But the Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing - that celebrates and believes in government torture, endorses the pulverization of Gazans with glee, and wants to attack Iran - is something else.
Something much darker.