{"id":8855,"date":"2006-04-04T21:37:07","date_gmt":"2006-04-05T04:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/04\/04\/how-disappointing.html"},"modified":"2006-04-04T21:37:07","modified_gmt":"2006-04-05T04:37:07","slug":"how_disappointi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/04\/04\/how_disappointi.html","title":{"rendered":"How disappointing"},"content":{"rendered":"

John McCain cozies up to Jerry Falwell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why it\u2019s important to hold someone like Mr. McCain \u2014 who is still widely regarded as a moderate, in spite of his extremely conservative voting record \u2014 accountable when he cozies up to Mr. Falwell. Nobody thinks that Mr. McCain shares all of Mr. Falwell\u2019s views. But when Mr. McCain said that the Christian right had a right to be part of the Republican Party, he was in effect saying that Mr. Falwell\u2019s statements were within the realm of acceptable political discourse.<\/p>\n

Just to be clear: this is a free country, and Mr. Falwell has a right to say what he thinks, even if his views include the belief that other people, by saying what they think, brought down God\u2019s wrath on America. By the same token, any political party has a right to include Mr. Falwell and his supporters, just as any politician has a right to make a political alliance with Mr. Falwell.<\/p>\n

But if you choose to make common cause with religious extremists, you are accepting some responsibility for their extremism. By welcoming Mr. Falwell and people like him as members of their party, Republicans are saying that it\u2019s O.K. \u2014 not necessarily correct, but O.K. \u2014 to declare that 9\/11 was America\u2019s punishment for its tolerance of abortion and homosexuality, that Islam is a terrorist religion, and that Jews can\u2019t go to heaven. And voters should judge the Republican Party accordingly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not that I thought he had much chance of getting the nomination anyway, but it seems to me McCain — assuming he’s angling to run again in ’08 — has managed to alienate a good chunk of his base without really standing to gain much ground with the religious right. A pity, that he felt that was the thing to do, whether it was done pragmatically or on principle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John McCain cozies up to Jerry Falwell. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s important to hold someone like Mr. McCain \u2014 who is still widely regarded as a moderate, in spite of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-2008"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10905,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/22\/farewell_to_falwell.html","url_meta":{"origin":8855,"position":0},"title":"Farewell to Falwell","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 22-May-07 6:09pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As thousands gathered to mourn Rev. Jerry Falwell\u00a0at his funeral today, I'll point to this article that looks back at Falwell's earliest activism, and some of the founding impetus...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10928,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/15\/rev_falwells_greatest_hit.html","url_meta":{"origin":8855,"position":1},"title":"Rev. Falwell’s Greatest Hits","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 15-May-07 8:41pm","format":false,"excerpt":"But before anyone thinks I'm getting all gooey-eyed over Jerry Falwell's passing, or wonders why anyone would feel any animus toward the fellow, Les points (a couple of links in)...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":592,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/09\/14\/falwell_blames.html","url_meta":{"origin":8855,"position":2},"title":"Falwell blames gays, liberal groups for terrorist attacks","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Sep-01 7:18am","format":false,"excerpt":"Falwell blames gays, liberal groups for terrorist attacks Mr. Falwell, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Assuming this bit is true, it's probably the most...","rel":"","context":"In "9-11"","block_context":{"text":"9-11","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/9-11"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10929,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/15\/rip_rev_jerry_falwell.html","url_meta":{"origin":8855,"position":3},"title":"RIP, Rev. Jerry Falwell","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 15-May-07 2:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I will not mourn Rev. Falwell's passing from the American political scene, where I feel he did tremendous damage to our freedoms and common vision as a\u00a0united people, nor...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/falwell.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10900,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/23\/probably_not_what_jesus_w.html","url_meta":{"origin":8855,"position":4},"title":"Probably Not What Jesus Would Do","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 23-May-07 9:28am","format":false,"excerpt":"Weird story here.\u00a0 A Liberty University student was\u00a0arrested at Jerry Falwell's funeral with some home-made incendiary bombs.\u00a0 But nobody seems to think it was to disrupt the funeral, but that...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7792,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/10\/testing_times.html","url_meta":{"origin":8855,"position":5},"title":"Testing times","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 10-Aug-05 10:30am","format":false,"excerpt":"Does anyone actually listen to Jerry Falwell any more? Anyone, that is, besides the folks he manages to offend every time he opens his mouth? A Jewish organization is calling...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}