Who is John McCain, really?

On Monday, February 28, in the year 2000, John McCain gave a speech in the State of Virginia, a stronghold of the Religious Right.

Mr. McCain, running for the Republican nomination, took after Mr. Bush. He said that leaders of the Religious Right, allied to Mr. Bush, were "agents of intolerance," engaged in tactics of "division and slander."

Whee!

Senator McCain continued: "I am a Reagan Republican who will defeat Al Gore. Unfortunately, Governor Bush is a Pat Robertson Republican who will lose to Al Gore."


McCain figured he had something going here, as Bush, baffled like usual, gave a speech at the ultra-conservative Bob Jones University (where interracial dating is taboo) and failed to say anything about prejudice or the fact that Bob Jones' leaders regularly make nasty comments about the Roman Catholic Church.

So Bush wrote a letter of apology to Cardinal John O'Connor, the RC Archbishop of New York.


Bush didn't take McCain's slam sitting down, however. He whined that "It sounds like Senator McCain has taken to name-calling, needless name-calling." But Bush refused to answer any questions about his relationship with Pat Robertson.

Meanwhile, Pat Robertson arranged for a taped phone call to be sent to Michigan voters in which he claimed McCain was biased against the Religious Right.

Now that pissed off the war hero, and referring to Robertson's phone call he said, "The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country.

"Neither party," McCain continued, "should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance."


Don't you just love it? This is, in case you forgot, the same Senator John McCain who in 2007 and 2008 tripped all over himself pandering to these very same "agents of intolerance," indeed some even worse "agents of intolerance."

Now, Pat Robertson, James Hagee, Rod Parsley, Falwell Junior, et. al., have suddenly become faithful leaders of the faithful, who are able to provide spiritual advice to Senator McCain. And Senator McCain must have concluded that those tactics of "division and slander" worked well enough for George W., so he'd better have some of that stuff himself!

It is true that McCain has rejected the endorsement of a couple of these clowns, but only after they became an embarrassment he could no longer ignore. That does not alter the fact that he ran after these Religious Right cretins like a dog in heat until he could get their attention long enough to beg for their endorsement.


Who is John McCain, really?