politics to go: jeff dunetz

No ‘Hymietown’ redux. Cruz is no anti-Semite

Posted

A memorable part of Thursday’s GOP debate was the exchange between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz about the Texas Senator’s statement that Trump had New York Values. 

By lunchtime on Friday my twitter feed and email mail box was filled with notes asking if Ted Cruz’s statement about “New York” was meant as a slam at Jews. I can see where that would come from. After all, often people say nasty things about New York and/or Miami as a veiled way of being being anti-Semitic.  But this is not true with Cruz.

The New York values exchange got the “Saturday Night Live” treatment over the weekend in a skit about the debate which ended with the Cruz character indicating that he used “New York Values” because he couldn’t say “liberal Jews.” The skit didn’t have the humor of some of the later parts of the show and their target was way off. Ted Cruz is the most pro-Jewish and pro-Israel candidate running in either party.

In the SNL skit, Cruz (played by Taran Killam) is asked to explain the NY Values statement. He answers,” I think most people know exactly what New York values are. And frankly, they are not the rest of the country’s values. Instead of celebrating Christmas, New Yorkers celebrate a pagan holiday called Festivus. Instead of watching American football, they challenge each other to (expletive deleted) contests. In New York people don’t say hi to their neighbors. They say “Hello, Newman.” When one of the moderators points out that the Texas senator is just describing “Seinfeld,” the fake Cruz responds by saying, “Believe me, if I could say ‘liberal Jews,’ I would.” 

This slander of Cruz strikes at the very heart of the senator’s religious beliefs. For the Texas senator (like most evangelicals), the support of Jews and Israel is not a matter of politics, it’s a matter of faith.

Page 1 / 3