{"id":14821,"date":"2008-03-08T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2008-03-08T14:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14821.html"},"modified":"2008-03-08T09:00:20","modified_gmt":"2008-03-08T14:00:20","slug":"mccains-textbook-non-rejection-rejection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccains-textbook-non-rejection-rejection\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain’s textbook non-rejection rejection"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was fully prepared to let this go, but now that John McCain, for the first time in nearly a week, has finally commented<\/a> on the John Hagee controversy, it’s worth noting exactly what he had to say.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s pause right there to consider how truly vacuous this new line is. Hagee has called the Roman Catholic Church “the Great Whore,” the “apostate church,” the “anti-Christ,” and “a false cult system” that inspired Adolf Hitler to initiate the Holocaust. “If they are anti-Catholic<\/i>“? For goodness sakes, if John McCain isn’t sure whether these remarks constitute anti-Catholic animus, what, pray tell, would do the trick?<\/p>\n

For that matter, the second part of the quote is no better. Hagee believes the Catholic Church is a whorish anti-Christ, and “if” Catholics find that “offensive,” McCain repudiates it. I see. So, as far as McCain’s concerned, maybe some Catholics like it<\/i> when their church is denounced as “the Great Whore” and “a false cult system”?<\/p>\n

The way McCain said this, it’s like a textbook non-apology apology, except in this case, it’s a non-rejection rejection.<\/p>\n

My hunch is, reporters — who’ve gone to almost comical lengths to give McCain a pass on this controversy — will consider McCain’s comments yesterday as the end of the story. After all, they’ll figure, he repudiated Hagee’s anti-Catholic comments. What else is there?<\/p>\n

Plenty.
\n
\nWill McCain denounce Hagee’s anti-Catholic remarks without qualifiers?<\/p>\n

Is McCain still “very proud” to have Hagee’s support, despite his record of bigotry?<\/p>\n

Is McCain also prepared to comment on Hagee’s anti-Semitic comments? How about his anti-Muslim comments? And anti-gay comments? And misogynistic comments?<\/p>\n

Does McCain agree with Hagee’s statement<\/a> that “God is going to use Muslim terrorists to create ‘bloodbaths’ in our streets to punish us for our sinful policies toward Israel?”<\/p>\n

As for the media, in case you’re curious, the headline on the AP story read, “McCain Rejects Anti-Catholic Views.” It ran that way in hundreds of newspapers<\/a> nationwide this morning.<\/p>\n

It looks like McCain’s base has done him another favor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was fully prepared to let this go, but now that John McCain, for the first time in nearly a week, has finally commented on the John Hagee controversy, it’s worth noting exactly what he had to say. Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday repudiated any views of a prominent televangelist who endorsed him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}