As someone active on this front let me say that the Jewish community stays away from the Republican Party based mainly on three issues (don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger):

1) Abortion
2) Creationism (or Intelligent Design if you will)
3) Evangelical base (years of proselytizing to Jews have left most Jews deeply mistrustful).

None of these issues are critical national issues and yet the Republican Party clings to them as if they were equal to economic or foreign policy problems. When I tried, in the last election, to talk about the most important issues, namely terrorism and the economy I was simply told to look at Sarah Palin’s tepid response to the Theory of Evolution.

Until and unless the Republican Party drops these issues from being high on the agenda they will not be able to broaden the base of support, Jewish or otherwise.