These groups could lose influence if Mitt Romney loses. Right's pro-Israel groups take risk

Conservative pro- Israel groups that have spent millions of dollars targeting President Barack Obama’s policies toward the Jewish state are facing a daunting reality: If the president wins anyway, their political influence may never be the same.

For groups such as the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Emergency Committee for Israel, as well as a vocal class of Israel-boosting GOP opinion leaders, the 2012 presidential election is an almost existential test of relevance. In a sense, the 2012 race is to conservative Israel hawks what the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall was for organized labor; a campaign that could permanently strike fear into their political enemies or raise embarrassing questions about their viability as a national political force.


Funded in large part by billionaire gaming magnate Sheldon Adelson — an unswerving supporter of Israel and its conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — these groups have helped place Israel at the core of the GOP message on foreign policy. They’ve aired television ads seeking to woo Jewish voters away from the Democratic Party; one group, Secure America Now, has run multiple ads in Florida simply clipping from Netanyahu’s warnings about the threat of a nuclear Iran.

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So far, the impact of all those efforts is uncertain at best: A poll released in September by the American Jewish Committee found Obama leading Mitt Romney by 41 points among Jews, 65 percent to 24 percent. A Gallup Poll last month was even more optimistic for Obama, showing him ahead 70 percent to 25 percent.

Jewish voters aren’t the only constituency that cares about Israel; evangelicals in particular are strongly hawkish when it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship. But when it comes to swinging votes in 2012 on the basis of Israel policy, Jews have been the focus of Republican efforts, and may be the best indicator of whether the issue packs a punch in the presidential race.

( See also: POLITICO's swing-state map)

Former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, a prominent Jewish leader in the GOP, argued that Obama is all but certain to fall short of his 2008 vote total with Jews — and that in any case, conservative pro-Israel groups have made a meaningful difference in the 2012 race regardless of the outcome.

“Obama got 78 percent of the Jewish vote in the last election. He’s not going to get 78 percent of the Jewish vote this time,” Coleman said. “[Obama] understands the reality that Americans expect our president to stand strongly by our democratic ally.”

In the third, foreign policy-focused presidential debate on Monday, Coleman predicted, “both the president and Gov. Romney are going to talk about the importance of standing by Israel. The difference is, this president has a record.”

RJC president Matt Brooks predicted that there would be a “significant erosion of Jewish support for the president,” based both on “Israel and foreign policy but also significant dissatisfaction with the economic condition of the country.” Reaching out to Jews on Israel and other issues could lay groundwork for Republican gains in future cycles, Brooks said.

Obama’s Israel record, however, has not necessarily been the rich target Republicans hoped it would be, particularly given the administration’s wobbly early moves on Middle East peace. While it’s widely acknowledged that he has a chilly relationship with Netanyahu, Obama has maintained support for Israel’s “Iron Dome” rocket defense system, and the administration is holding a huge joint military exercise with Israel this weekend. If critics say Obama has not pursued an aggressive enough policy toward Iran’s nuclear program, the White House has also backed exacting sanctions that make the president tougher to caricature as weak-kneed on Iran.

A Pew survey released last week, ahead of the foreign policy debate, found Republicans and Democrats with widely divergent views of American policy toward Israel. Among independent voters, 26 percent said the U.S. is “too supportive” of Israel; 24 percent said it’s “not supportive enough” and a 39 percent plurality said the current level of U.S. support for Israel is “about right.”

Yet there’s also no doubt that Obama has left himself open to attack by handling the hyper-charged, symbolism-laden politics of Israel in an at-times indelicate manner. He has not visited Israel during his term in office. Obama has not demanded deeper concessions to the Palestinians than previous U.S. presidents, but he has called more explicitly than others for a return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

And during the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, Democrats stumbled into a significant controversy after failing to describe Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in a version of the party platform.

David Harris, who heads the National Jewish Democratic Council, acknowledged that the level of intensity behind the GOP’s Israel message could mean that some Jews “fall prey to outright lies and distortions about the president’s record on Israel.”

“The vilification has just become repugnant and repulsive and deeply damaging,” Harris said. “If there were a Democratic presidential candidate that were anti-Israel, that would be a problem. That’s how Ronald Reagan did so well … But since that’s not the case, [Jewish voters] don’t have to make a choice when it comes to Israel and dealing with Iran.”

In the eyes of his fellow Democrats, Obama has also been thwarted and undermined by an Israeli head of government who has tiptoed right up to the edge of endorsing Romney’s campaign. Several Democratic strategists fumed over what they view as theatrical ploys by Netanyahu to undercut Obama: his warm reception of Romney in Israel over the summer, as well as his public demand for a meeting with Obama at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this fall.

Obama didn’t grant Netanyahu — or any other foreign leaders — a meeting, a decision Romney now routinely criticizes.

Democratic campaign veteran Tad Devine, who advised Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s 1999 campaign for prime minister, said Netanyahu had taken an “unprecedented” gamble by meddling directly in U.S. electoral politics.

“I can’t remember an Israeli prime minister being so transparently political about a choice in a U.S. presidential election, as Netanyahu has been in this one,” said Devine, who argued that Obama’s substantive record had undercut the impact of Israel-themed attacks against him. “It would have a very debilitating effect if someone were genuinely anti-Israel. It would upset a lot of people, and not just Jewish Americans.”

A Netanyahu adviser did not respond to a request for comment for this story, or to repeated requests for comment about the Secure America Now campaign featuring the prime minister’s speeches.

Former Florida Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler suggested Netanyahu is now seeking to play a “more responsible role” in the presidential election, after his early public flirtations with Romney. An Obama victory, Wexler said, would “expose the lack of credibility” of Republican partisans going after the president’s Israel record.

“This election is the first time where an unfortunate group of people have sought to make Israel a wedge issue between the two parties. And the unfortunate result, no matter what happens, is that Israel loses in that circumstance,” Wexler said. “Their priority is to elect Mitt Romney president. If Israel becomes a pawn in that game, so be it, from their perspective.”

For Romney, Israel has become a central pillar of his foreign policy argument. In his speech to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Romney accused Obama of having “thrown allies like Israel under the bus, even as he has relaxed sanctions on Castro’s Cuba.” He has repeatedly cited his own personal history with Netanyahu, with whom he worked at the Boston Consulting Group decades ago.

Throughout the 2012 campaign, Romney has declared that the outcome of the election would determine whether Iran acquires a nuclear weapon that it could use against Israel. Under Obama, Iran would gain that capacity, Romney argues.

Evangelical leader Ralph Reed, who heads the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said that support for Israel had “become part of the Romney brand” since he first ran for president in 2007.

Whether or not the Jewish vote moves substantially, Reed said the difference in Romney and Obama’s views on Israel has had a material impact on evangelical voters’ enthusiasm for the GOP nominee.

“I think there’s no question that among Jewish Americans, as well as evangelicals, that the intensity level of their opposition to Obama has been increased by what they perceive to be at best ambiguous support for Israel and at worst shabby treatment of Israel,” said Reed, who said his group is spotlighting Obama’s Israel record in “if not all, certainly a majority of our voter communications.”

Among the operatives on the right who have wielded Israel policy most insistently against the president, there’s a private level of recognition that a defeat on Nov. 6 could be a setback for their advocacy. One strategist sighed that Obama could very well “punish Bibi” if he manages to get reelected over the furious objections of conservative Israel supporters.

Others argue that whether or not Obama wins, he has been forced to hew more closely to a pro-Israel position as a result of all the money and messaging hurled against him from these groups.

Noah Pollak, the executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, said the group’s priorities would not change as a result of the 2012 campaign. In addition to its work targeting Obama, ECI has also run ads against Wisconsin Rep. Tammy Baldwin in her Senate race against former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson.

“ECI supports Romney over Obama because he’s more pro-Israel than Obama, just like we favor Thompson over Baldwin because he’s more pro-Israel. We’d of course prefer that all our elected officials were pro-Israel,” Pollak said. “So long as people like Obama and Baldwin are in office, we’ll try to ensure voters understand their records.”