1115.org

John McCain has suddenly found it impossible to go on defending John Hagee’s bilge, and his relationship with this bilge-pump.

Who is John Hagee?

Hagee hates Catholics, hates Muslims, hates gays, believes Jews are responsible for bringing persecution upon themselves, believes U.S. foreign policy should actively help bring about the Rapture, believes Americans’ sins led to Hurricane Katrina’s destruction, and in general, is an all-around nut.

Despite all this, McCain actively wooed him, seeking his support and his endorsement. For a whole year. When he won it,

Mr. McCain … said he was “very honored” by Mr. Hagee’s endorsement.

Confronted with Hagee’s bilge, McCain and his surrogates just sidestepped the issue initially. McCain didn’t repudiate, renounce or denounce any of Hagee’s hate-speech. He offered a tepid statement that he didn’t “agree with all of Pastor Hagee’s views”, but he was still proud to have his endorsement. McCain never explained which of Hagee’s views he didn’t actually agree with.

When he finally got around to making a formal statement, here’s what he emitted from his curiously located speech orifice:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday repudiated any views of a prominent televangelist who endorsed him last month “if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics.”

McCain didn’t repudiate any of the other hate-speech, just the anti-Catholic garbage. And he really wasn’t sure whether Catholics found it offensive that Hagee called the Catholic church “the great whore” and “a false cult system”, and that he “blamed Adolf Hitler’s Catholic education for his subsequent acts of genocide”. He wasn’t even sure if such views are anti-Catholic. But he did generously allow that he repudiated these views if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics.

At the same time, McCain continued to defend Hagee:

I will say that he said that his words were taken out of context, he defends his position. I hope that maybe you’d give him a chance to respond. He says he has never been anti-Catholic…

As recently as a month ago, John McCain’s official position on Hagee was: “I’m glad to have his endorsement.” And then this week, some more Hagee bilge hit the fan:

John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God’s behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a “hunter,” sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God’s will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.

How McCain managed to figure out that Jews (and others) might find these remarks offensive, we will never know (and Hagee of course says that he has never been anti-Semitic either), But something finally appears to have clicked in what McCain is pleased to call his brain. He finally repudiated the filth Hagee has been spouting for years, and he finally rejected Hagee’s endorsement. But St. John’s repudiation remarks sounded real strange to me:

Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.

Obviously? Hagee made all kinds of very offensive anti-Catholic remarks, and St. John did not find them very offensive at all. Hagee made all kinds of very offensive anti-gay remarks, and St. John did not find those very offensive at all. So it’s obvious St. John that St. John would find the Hitler-is-an-instrument-of-God’s-will remarks deeply offensive?

But what I find really strange about McCain’s statement is that it’s not just these latest Hitler remarks that he is deeply offended by. McCain finds other, previously aired remarks deeply offensive and indefensible too. So deeply offensive and indefensible that he never got around to repudiating them before? So deeply offensive and indefensible that it never interfered with being proud and glad to have Hagee’s endorsement?

What previous remarks are you thinking of, dear John? Prey tell; it would be so illuminating to know. And while you’re at it, how come you just quietly swallowed these deeply offensive remarks till now?

This joker can’t pull off a simple repudiation statement without putting his foot in it, and he wants to be president? Clearly, it’s not just his policies that make him a perfect Bush clone.