At Think Progress, Matt tosses out again the fact that McCain stated at one point that he was glad to have Hagee’s endorsement.  The occasion for this latest attempt to get traction for the story is Dennis Prager interviewing this moron about his comments that the flooding of New Orleans was an expression of God’s wrath against the city, because a Gay rally was scheduled for the subsequent Monday.  The dolt cites Deuteronomy, ignoring the whole business of Abraham’s conversation with God regarding the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.In other words, chickens coming home to roost in God-damned New Orleans.  Even funnier is the following:
In February, after working hard to gain Hagee’s endorsement, McCain said he was “very honored†to receive it. Since then, he has both “repudiate[d]†and defended Hagee’s anti-Catholic and “anti-anything†remarks. But as Think Progress has noted, McCain has never specifically commented on Hagee’s offensive beliefs about Hurricane Katrina or his anti-gay comments.Given the fact that McCain will be in New Orleans tomorrow, will reporters ask whether he agrees with Hagee belief that the devastated city was cursed because of a gay pride parade? We’ll be watching.   ÂÂ
Sure he’ll repudiate it.  He’s not a moron, and the wack-fringe fundies don’t really have anywhere to go.  But we’re still waiting, as a matter of fact, to hear Baracky reject point by point the crazy shit that the Reverend Wright said in his sermons, and once again they give the Big O’s opponents an opportunity to point that out, and to point out that he has attended that church for 20 years and could no more turn his back on it than he could his dear departed racist typical white granny.
But Matt and his pals don’t understand this, because they apparently believe that Americans generally are as naive and batshit partisan as their readers.
Shit, Dan. You’re just inviting nishidiot to crap all over this thread aren’t you? OTOH, if it ultimately induces another all caps rage fest from her, it should be fun. Win-win, I guess.
BUTT HAGEE IZ TEH SAME AS WRIGHT!!!!!
BOTH IZ ISOMORPHOLOGIZMS
HE HEH
DAN U LULZ HAGEE I NO!!!
WEDGE ME OBAMA, WEDGE ME.
I’m willing to bet that McCain doesn’t believe that New Orleans was hurricaned cause of the gay rally thinger, and I bet he doesn’t want anyone else to believe that either. It’s just sort of my sense of McCain.
Olberfuckingcockgobbler stated, unequivocably, that Hagee is McCain’s spiritual advisor. He could not be more in the tank for Baracky if he tried. The next 7 months are going to be looooong, yet entertaining.
I’m Catholic, perhaps “red hot” in some people’s minds. I attend an indult, licit Tridentine Mass almost exclusively. Hagee doesn’t bother me at all.
Why, you ask? Hagee’s theology is simply different than mine. I believe it is very wrong, but Hagee’s beliefs by and large concern matters of faith and practice which he approaches from a distinctively Protestant frame with some vestigial Know-Nothingism thrown in for measure. In short, we disagree about Heaven, and the proper path to that end. He fears the cultural aspects of my religion – the corpus, sacramentals, oils, meditation on the passion – as foreign. In practice and in everyday life, this means very, very little.
The difference is that Wright’s most offensive statements really don’t touch theology proper at all. They’re just some freaky boutique Afro-Marxism designed as an indictment of everything non-black, distinctively American, or patently successful, wrapped in the tax-exempt status of a Church. Hagee is sincere but wrong when he tries to understand divine revelation. Wright doesn’t really want to understand divine revelation at all. We disagree about Earth with Wright, and don’t really have any idea of whether he accepts that there is a Heaven for which to aspire.
Hagee doesn’t (to my knowledge) advocate government oppression of Catholics. Hagee interpreted an “act of God” in a way with which one may or may not agree, and I am certain he does not exempt himself from being a sinner worthy of punishment but for divine mercy. Wright welcomed an attack perpetrated by hateful, spiteful men against his fellow Americans as morally “just.” There is a difference that is not very small, and not hard to see unless you simply don’t want to see it.
Thank you, Alec. Your last paragraph is perhaps most important, I think.
What this all is… is an attempt to break up the Reagan Coalition. Once upon a time people like Hagee would have been absolute Democrats, and in fact Matt’s essay would only need modification of a few nouns to be a perfectly adequate pulpit sermon circa, say, 1959. Evil soulless Republicans don’t deserve the support of the Godly, y’know. That came to an end with Nixon’s Southern Strategy, but what Lefties don’t like to admit is that the Strategy would never have worked in the first place if Democrats hadn’t already taken the first steps to declare the Hagees anathema. I know. I was there, and did at least a bit myself.
Hagee’s support is his congregation and a few fellow whackjobs. Wright’s support — is the full-throated approval of the entire Democratic Establishment and Press, however redundant the latter may be. Hagee and his followers are gonna vote for somebody, and McCain figures it might as well be him; the Democratic Party is falling all over itself to support, apologize for, and encourage Wright and his followers. The distinction is palpable.
What Democrats are anxiously trying to do is make Republicans insult Hagee in the same way they do. They figure that if McCain and the Republican Party can be somehow fooled into dismissing that sort of conservative Christian as strongly as the Democrats do, the “rightist theocrats” will go away. They won’t, and even centrist McCain is smart enough not to be that strong in his denunciations. And Hagee isn’t going to go away. He’s gonna vote for somebody, and he’s gonna encourage his followers to vote for somebody, and he’s smart enough not to waste that on a futile third-party fringe effort; and for every mild repudiation from a McCain or other Republican, there are a thousand nishis, some of them actually articulate, who will make it clear that so far as they are concerned Hagee needs to just FOAD, and they’re quite willing to help with the “D”.
I commented over at Matt’s. It’s late in the thread; let’s see if anybody bites, or if they decide to take it down as “hate speech”. It may just be that everybody’s gone on to something else.
Regards,
Ric
Looks like pete told you, Ric. It is right curious how them homing chickens are such powerful selective roosters.
– If Hagee, 100 years of war, hes got a temper, and hes old, is all they’ve got the Left is in deep shit.
Alec: With the bases loaded, you hit a home run. Thank you for expressing my own thoughts so well.
I tried to read the rest Dan, I really did, but I was just hung up on this
At Think Progress
and it wasn’t posted by that whizbang Amanda so there just seemed to be no point. Sorry.
Heh. I can imagine, and I’ll have to, since my ISP is having a slowdown night — thinkprogress loads to about comment #175 or so, then FireFox smugly informs me “Done.” Ah, well, it’s all the same in the end, innit?
What amuses me about the whole deal is that the tactic is virtually certain to backfire. Hagee, in context, is about as remarkable as a French Marxist — the genre has a long (and generally not very nice) history, and most Protestants, at least, are thoroughly familiar with it; anybody but me remember the Tennessee Ernie Ford bit about attending the snake-handling church? “Look around and see if you can find the back door.” “I already looked, and there ain’t one.” “Reckon where do they want one?” Brother Love’s Travelin’ Salvation Show demonstrates at least some familiarity, and I don’t recall Neil Diamond as a noted theocon —
The best evidence that the tactic won’t work is right there before us. John McCain, pressed, mumbles something about not buying that stuff, and Moves On™, and everybody nods and asks the next question. The Left is in full, hazmat-suit, red-lights-and-siren damage control mode, spinning like the turbocharger on a Peterbilt climbing the Grapevine to try to deflect attention. It might even work, but for their ultimate purpose it’s self-defeating.
Depending on which statistics you prefer, somewhere between slightly over half and about eight-tenths of the American public profess religious belief at least to some extent. The goal of the Left has to be to get people to vote for their candidate, whichever one that is, and not for John McCain. Throwing at least half, if not three-quarters, of those Americans who are at least somewhat religious under the bus does not strike me as a particularly effective method of achieving that goal.
Regards,
Ric
rough weather? keep meaning to ask why you have to eat up the local news every Wednesday with wall clouds.
Heh. I didn’t order the wall clouds, maggie.
Actually, tonight has been something of a relief. I don’t have a garage or carport, so I covered up the slightly-less-decrepit car with an old piece of carpet in anticipation of hailstones. In the event all we got was a deluge, two inches or so spread over a whole hour, which counts as “gentle rain” around here this time of year. Much nicer than last week, when I picked up a 3″ diameter hailstone outside the store.
Oh, and hyperusa finally did come back enough for me to read pete’s post and respond. Let’s see how that goes, although it’s time for me to go to bed. Long day tomorrow, and I’m ‘way behind.
Regards,
Ric
Sometimes you remind me of Robert Frost, just more Texasy.
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Who is we in the we’re? I’m not waiting for Obama to state more refutations versus the ones he’s already made, much less a point by point rebuttal.
Why would he? Obama is not subject to the/a Inquisition.
And a great deal of the remainder aren’t particularly put off by religious folks.
Thor, STFU. We got it — you’re fine with a racist being elected to the White House, so long as it’s a particular brand of racist.
“Why would he? Obama is not subject to the/a Inquisition.”
AS opposed to, say any Republican candidate running for any office.
“Are you now, or have you ever been a…..Christian?????
“Biggles! Fetch…THE SOFT CUSHIONS!”
Olberfuckface’s overt and blatant lying, though common, is nonetheless breathtaking when watching it.
Really? Hillary will be glad to hear he’s dropping out of the race for president.
I’m not fine with Hillary Clinton being elected.
Obama is rubber and you’re glue, homeflip.
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