DON’T FOLKS USUALLY LIKE ‘UNDERDOGS’?…. Over the summer, as Supreme Court confirmation hearings got underway for Elena Kagan, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) launched a lengthy broadside against former Justice Thurgood Marshall, Kagan’s hero.
“[W]hen [Kagan] was working in the Clinton administration,” Kyl complained, “she encouraged a colleague working on a speech about Justice Marshall to emphasize his unshakable determination to protect the underdog.”
This was intended as criticism. The idea of Marshall protecting the underdog was a concept Kyl found so troubling, it became part of his initial criticism of Kagan’s record.
Three months later, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was asked why Jewish voters tend to vote Democratic.
Mr. Cantor believes the American-Jewish community is overwhelmingly Democratic because Jews “are prone to want to help the underdog.”
In a general sense, Cantor’s assessment of Jewish voters’ motivations may very well be true.
But I’m curious — why are Republicans not prone to want to help the underdog? Between Cantor and Kyl, should the public begin to think that a vote for Democrats is a vote for underdogs?
