Apparently religious tolerance and an understanding of the United States Constitution are officially rebuked by Republican doctrine. In the following video, a representative of the McCain campaign does the right thing by confronting one of the chuckling bigots that have become emblematic of McCain rallies, but the way the campaign handles the story is, well, another story...
In the article on the Huffington Post, they show the subsequent CNN clip that really defies reason. When they were about to interview the man who did the right thing in the name of the McCain campaign, he was told that his message had not been cleared and that he should not give the interview.
Am I insane, or did they just shred a winning lottery ticket? Here you have a representative of the campaign providing a shining and non-scripted example of what McCain has been trying to claim -- that when then see this kind of crap, they immediately refute it. Instead, we're left wondering why they would stuff a sock in the guy's mouth before he could tell his story!
I can only hope that the coming days provide the explanation, and that it is simply that they of course want us to know about this event, but that they are trying to make sure their surrogates are truly speaking on behalf of the campaign before they go on the air. I wouldn't fault them for trying to make sure they don't have any more idiots like Bachmann and her McCarthy-like inquisition going on the air. I will fault them, however, if we don't hear something from their campaign about this in the next couple of days.
If we don't, then the only conclusion for me to draw is that they were worried it wouldn't poll well with "the base" if it got out that McCain's supporters exhibited tolerance toward Muslim Americans at one of his rallies. It is a tangible suggestion that religious tolerance is officially omitted when it comes to the Republican brand. I'm not suggesting there aren't plenty of Republicans that feel the campaign representative did the right thing. Surely there are. I'm suggesting that those who control the Republican message are doing a great disservice to their party, and their country, if they suppress this positive example of tolerance.
Just as the idiot promoting hate at the rally is emblematic of McCain's events, this poorly-handled, botched, and lost opportunity is symbolic of his entire campaign. It's a campaign characterized by conflicting messages, lost opportunities to do the right thing rather than pander to the extreme right-wing, and an endless string of backpedaling to explain what they "meant to say". They'd rather be confidently wrong than corrected and right. This post is getting too long, so I'll have more on that later. (teaser)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
What a great exchange! More of that needs to happen in this country. Wow- a conservative Christian defending Muslims....never thought I'd see the day. In my Monday morning political discussion with a moderately Conservative Republican coworder, I learned that Powell endorsed Obama based on his race. Didn't expect this line from this relatively intelligent person. I asked him if he listened to Powell's interview, and he admitted that he had not. So I printed out the 12-page transcript and gave it to him - he said he would read it. We've got to stand up to this nonsense each chance we get. That is real education!
i recently received the circulating e-mail about how the book of revelation states the anti-christ will be a man in his mid-40s of muslim descent. have you all seen this?! the greatest thing about the e-mail is that it said "if you disagree, just delete." let me tell you, that was the first time in a long time i was so excited to hit "reply all." i went to town on that one.
Post a Comment