With Friends Like These...

The right wing hates John McCain. I mean really hates him. He's one of those occasionally principled Republicans who rejects torture, thinks our current legalized-bribery system of campaign financing needs to be cleaned up, and tells the Falwell wing of the party to get lost. Wingnuts from Rush Limbaugh to Ann Coulter have said they'd rather vote for Hillary Clinton over McCain - and considering how they believe Clinton to be just short of the Antichrist, that's saying quite a lot.

Well, so much for those pesky beliefs. McCain's handlers realize that he has no chance of winning in November without the support of the wildest GOP nuts out there, so he has tossed those principles under the bus. He now embraces the use of torture, is notably silent on the wash of corrupting money in politics, and accepted John Hagee's endorsement.

Hagee, the pastor of a Texas-based megachurch, is the holder of political views which can be described politely as "Neanderthal." For example, he:

• Blamed Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans' annual Gay Pride parade and the city's "level of sin that was offensive to God"
• Held a mock "slave sale" as a fundraiser
• Calls the Vatican "the Great Whore" and is vehemently anti-Catholic
• Wants to attack Iran, the consequences be damned
  
• Calls the Harry Potter series an inducement to witchcraft and Satanism
• Says feminism is about "throwing off authority in rebellion against God's pattern for the family"
• Says Muslims are religiously required to kill all non-Muslims
  

And if all that isn't enough, he is strongly pro-Israel for all the wrong reasons. Rather than supporting Israel because it's a solid and friendly democracy, he does so because an independent Jewish state fits into his theology. According to some sects of fundamentalist Christianity, the Second Coming and the End Times cannot take place until a strong Israel exists and all Jews convert to the "correct" faith. (The Left Behind series illustrates this notion to gory extremes.)

His views about unconverted Jews aren't hard to fathom. In his book Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee blames anti-Semitism on the Jews themselves:

"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day... How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come...it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people."

So let's see now - Hagee hates women, Catholics, blacks, gays, Jews, Muslims, and pretty much everyone else who isn't white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Is this really someone McCain wants by his side?