Senator John McCain on Thursday rejected the endorsements of two prominent evangelical ministers whose backing he had sought to shore up his credentials with religious conservatives.
Mr. McCain repudiated the Rev. John C. Hagee, a televangelist, after a watchdog group released a recording of a sermon in which Mr. Hagee said Hitler and the Holocaust had been part of God’s plan to chase the Jews from Europe and drive them to Palestine.
Later in the day, he also rejected the endorsement of the Rev. Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, Ohio, whose anti-Muslim sermons were broadcast on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
Controversy has dogged the Hagee endorsement since Mr. McCain announced it at a February news conference, and just last week Mr. Hagee issued a letter expressing regret for “any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.”
Not that I have any truck with the odious Parsley and Hagee, mind you, but how can one “reject” an endorsement? How can someone forbid another person from openly supporting his candidacy? I don’t know what I find more ridiculous – the liberal Democrats who insisted on the rejection or McCain’s rejection. What a farcical piece of political kabuki theatre.
No. 1: I guess it is impossible to reject an endorsement, as you suggest. Maybe “rebuff” would sound better. But I’m not sure that’s the point. Words may fail McCain or any politician in this situation, but the voters understand perfectly well what he means. If someone comes across sounding like a jerk and you want to distance yourself from his endorsement, attempted embrace, whatever, then you do what McCain has done. Whatever verb you want to use for it, the point gets made: you don’t want what’s being offered.
“McCain SOUGHT OUT this endorsement”
Matt [#3]: Important if correct: what’s the evidence that McCain actually sought Hagee’s endorsement?
#4 Irenaeus,
The evidence can be found [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/29/john-hagees-mccain-endor_n_89189.html]here[/url].
#5 NTO — Ahhhhh … the Huffington Post. So it must be true.
Perhaps if Mr. Hagee or Mr. Parsley had been Senator McCain’s pastor for 20 years, the senator would have been more conversant with their views.
I would have been much more impressed, if McCain had approched the subject as a matter of “freedom”.. i.e.
“In this country, everyone has a right to endorse or not anyone/thing they believe in. I do not know the man well at all, but have heard some unseemly things about his ministry. Therefore, I do not particularly welcome his endorsement, but would fight to the death to protect his right to say it.”
Nope, he had to be politically correct.
Oh well, I guess I’m just an old-fashioned grandmother
Gloria in SC.
IMO McCain is just another mealy-mouthed politician…
I looked at the Huffington link. The Huffington Post says the New York Times Magazine says that Hagee says that the McCain campaign sought his endorsement. If you know a politician who never deals with people who are questionable in any way, and who never compromises, it’s likely a not-very-successful politician.
I don’t know anything about this Parsley guy and I’m not going to bother to find out. Like Hagee, not a close McCain connection. However, every anti-Islam claim I’ve read in supposedly “Islamophobic” sources like jihadwatch.org has been spoken to me personally by a now-atheist culturally-Muslim friend I have here in the Middle East. It is a religion of control and submission, and is not at heart peaceful.
I agree that the Huffington link falls well short of substantiating that McCain sought out Hagee’s endorsement.