Election results

The election results were basically as anticipated, the Republicans carried the House of Representatives with a 60 seat changeover, but the Democrats hung onto the Senate by a few seats. There have been many commentators pontificating on the meaning of these results. Far be it from me to join them, but the obvious conclusion is that this is a repudiation of President Obama's program. When Obama was elected it was with a huge surge of enthusiasm over something new, "change" was in the air. But after all, the change was not as dramatic as some hoped and some of it was definitely unpalatable to a large proportion of the voters. So we are back to change again, now we have the Republican tea party candidates and a return to pure conservatism. Unfortunately there is always this see-saw between Democratic liberal Government control and Republican conservative hands-off Government.

From the perspective of Israel the main conclusion is that Israel and the Middle East are not important as far as the US voters are concerned, it is way down the list after domestic issues, including the economy, healthcare reform, pensions, energy and so on. Given that, it might be concluded that Obama will now turn his attention to those issues and have a more hands-off policy towards the Middle East. The opposite may also be possible, for one main reason. If Obama sees that he is being blocked in his domestic policies by the Republicans, he might turn to foreign policy, where he has more freedom of action, as an alternate way to establish his legacy. Every President wants to be the one who brings peace to the Middle East, and Obama wants to try to do that on his less than pro-Israel terms and now he only has two years to do it.

Although there are somewhat fewer Jews in the Congress than before, the overall attitude of the Congress is now even more pro-Israel than it was before. Rep. Eric Cantor, who is a strong Israel supporter, will be Republican House Majority Leader, the highest ranking ever for a Jew in Congress, a position from which he can certainly influence policy towards Israel. The attitude of many Democrats is that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve equal consideration in bringing about a peaceful solution, while the attitude of many Republicans is that Israel is a great ally of the US and ought to be preferred over the Palestinians (what have they done for us lately?). It is this traditional US preference for Israel rather than the apparent Obama preference for the Muslim side that we are hoping for from this new situation.