Politics
Arab Americans tend to vote more Democratic than Republican. In a recent 2007 Zogby poll 62% of Arab Americans vote Democratic, while only 25% vote Republican. The percentage of Arabs voting Democratic increased sharply after the Iraq War and is likely to have increased further since the Obama election. However, a number of prominent Arab American politicians are Republicans, including former New Hampshire Senator John E. Sununu, and California Congressman Darrell Issa, who was the driving force behind the state's 2003 recall election that removed Democratic Governor Gray Davis from office. The strong sense of family values characteristic of Arab Americans does not necessarily translate to Republican values in Arab American statesmen, however; the first woman Supreme Court Chief Justice in Florida, Rosemary Barkett, is known for her dedication to progressive values and has been publicly criticized by Republican politicians at various stages of her career. Ralph Nader is another example of a liberal Arab American politician.
Arab Americans gave George W. Bush a majority of their votes in 2000. However, as a group they backed John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008.
According to a 2000 Zogby poll, 52% of Arab Americans are pro-life, 74% support the death penalty, 76% are in favor of stricter gun control, and 86% want to see an independent Palestinian state. Arab American Republicans often view the GOP as more in line with Arab culture, which tends to be more socially conservative and values entrepreneurship and free enterprise. Arab American members of the Democratic party may choose to do so through a sense of social justice and traditional values of tolerance, or because of concerns over foreign policy and, in recent years, the Iraq War, Racial Profiling and the War on Terror.
Read more about this topic: Arab American
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently.... Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)