Seeking to cut into Barack Obama’s already shaky support among Jewish-Americans, John McCain told an Israel advocacy group Monday that Obama is soft on Iran’s anti-Semitic regime.
Telegraphing a general election strategy that entails aggressively challenging Obama’s national security credentials, McCain highlighted Obama’s vote against an amendment designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group responsible for killing U.S. troops in Iraq.
“Over three-quarters of the Senate supported this obvious step, but not Senator Obama,” McCain said at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington. “He opposed this resolution because its support for countering Iranian influence in Iraq was, he said, a ‘wrong message not only to the world, but also to the region.’ ”
McCain added: “Holding Iran’s influence in check, and holding a terrorist organization accountable, sends exactly the right message.”
Obama, who is scheduled to address the AIPAC conference Wednesday, said through a spokesman that he wanted to brand Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, but objected to other language in the amendment cited by McCain.
“The war in Iraq that John McCain supported and promises to continue indefinitely has done more to dramatically strengthen and embolden Iran than anything in a generation,” Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said.
Mindful that U.S. casualties in Iraq fell to an all-time low in May, McCain lambasted Obama for opposing President Bush’s surge of additional troops into Iraq last year, which has dramatically reduced violence.
“America’s progress in Iraq is the direct result of the new strategy that Senator Obama opposed,” McCain said. “It was the strategy he predicted would fail, when he voted to cut off funds for our forces in Iraq.”
McCain said Obama’s plan to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, “regardless of Israel’s security,” would result in “catastrophe.”
A recent Gallup poll shows Obama garnering 61 percent of the Jewish vote, compared with 32 percent for McCain. The margin, while significant, is smaller than the margins enjoyed by the last two Democratic presidential nominees.
In 2004, Democrat John Kerry beat Bush among Jewish-American voters by a margin of 77 to 22 percent, according to exit polls. In 2000, Al Gore beat Bush by 79 to 19 percent.
