THIS IS GREAT NEWS!!!! FOR THE POPE!!!!!

First let me just say that I am a Hillary supporter, and will vote for Obama in the fall should he win the nomination, without hesitation.

However, I feel that perhaps what McCain said with respect to Hagee's endorsement is what Obama should have said with respect to Farrakhan's endorsement (ie say he doesn't agree with many of the man's views but not outright reject the endorsement itself).

And I don't really think it's fair to criticize McCain for saying that he doesn't agree with many of Hagee's views while still implicitly accepting his endorsement, while at the same time arguing (as I've heard many people do) that it would be okay for Obama to do the same with respect to Farrakhan. Granted, Barack didn't do that. He "rejected and denounced" Farrakhan's endorsement. But many people thought that Tim Russert's question in and of itself was objectionable, and that Obama should have been able to reject many of Farrakhan's views without outright rejecting his support.

I'm just saying...

The Great Whore is John McCain. He said he doesn't agree with Hagee but he's willing to take the support of the nuttiest of the wingnuts, for the nut-wing of the GOP, the 29 percenters who want the Bush era to continue beyond 2009 in hopes of an apocalyptic showdown in the Middle East.
Aside from the "gutter religion" utterance, Rev. Farrakhan doesn't come close to Hagee for outrageous statements.

Soft Felt Hat, I can barely follow you.

Anyway, good for McCain. Obama should have said something exactly like this.

"The fact that he supports me does not mean that I endorse all of this thoughts, opinions, and behaviors. He's endorsed me, not the other way around. But anyone with more than two beans bopping around in their head understands this so why are we talking about it anyway, Tim?"

I registered just to post this.

Josh Micah Marshall you should be ashamed of yourself, you scumbag. You couldn't stumble over yourself quicker to talk about how stupid the link between Obama and Farrakhan was, and now you are posting this GARBAGE about McCain? You don't actually care about the philosophical and moral problems with BS slander pieces like these. You are just a partisan hack who can't wait to publish filth about Hillary Clinton while sucking down whatever talking points are coming out of the Obama campaign. It's been troubling reading this site recently for it's pretty obvious bias, but you sir, have just lost a reader. For good.

On the bright side we'll get this guilt by association nonsense out of the way early in the campaign. If everyone's guilty of it, it won't be an issue.

Then we can go back to what we all secretly understand deep down, despite our outward shows of righteous indignation: It's ridiculous to hold someone responsible for another adult's opinions and behavior. Even a politician.

i'm a hillary supporter who will vote for mccain if o's on the ticket. mccain just seems completely honest and not afraid to stand up for what he believes, no matter if some of his beliefs are a little out there. obama seems like a vacuous puppet, and reminds me curiously of our current president. vote for HILLARY 08!!!

McCain seems completely honest? It is to laugh!

McCain is really walking a tightrope here. If he can keep this from becoming a major story nationally, he can just bop along happily pandering to the religious right. But this is a risky strategy....Although it may be important to turn out the religious right for the general election, McCain risks turning up the noses of many independents and moderate republicans.

I think the reason McCain hasn't just flat out said this guy is a dummy is because after the recent appearance of Bill Cunningham where McCain "threw him under the bus", there was a huge outcry from the far right. Now certainly John McCain doesn't agree with this garbage, but he probably doesn't want to continue to insult conservative icons, especially when the link between this guy and McCain is so tenuous and stupid that it really doesn't even deserve a mention.

Uhh... what Josh Marshall has been saying is that the flap about Farrakhan endorsing Obama is silly, and that there seems to be a double standard applied when wing-nuts and racists support either Clinton or McCain. So to illustrate this point he provides examples, and then people like you come out of the woodwork to criticise him for being some kind of hypocrite.

Ok, fine gnobbles, just how would someone show how there's a double standard without actually providing examples?

I'd by McCain's distancing a bit more if he wasn't STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO THE GUY while the endorsement was given. Imagine if Obama was standing right next to Farrakhan and on camera when he endorsed him. Russert's gigantic head would have exploded and radiated all of Washington.

McCain's response was beyond weak, it was disingenuous.

I agree with Grover - it's his decision to fly out and meet up with Hagee to accept the endorsement that creates a problem for McCain. It would make a nice picture for an attack ad, and make it difficult for McCain to try and put any distance between him and Hagee.

I disagree with some of the earlier posters who think that anyone who would consider voting for McCain won't care about this. It plays right into a larger picture of McCain as a sellout to the worst Republican party special interests.

"McCain's response was beyond weak, it was disingenuous.
Posted by Grover M"

It was beyond disingenuous, it was dishonest.

I felt I just had to chime in to correct some erroneous information I keep seeing.

Louis Farrakhan did not endorse Obama! He merely said nice things about him. That is why Obama could only denounce Farrakhan's views, since there was no endorsement to reject.

McCain, however, should reject and denounce the endorsement of Hagee the Horrible.

this qualified acceptance of a polarizing religious nut and his other gaffes (lobbysits working out of his campaign bus, misspeaking saying he's a liberal, et al.) are further proof of two things.

1. The longer you stay in Congress, the more immune
you become to the things rest the of us find
objectionable or should.In McLame's case, you might
even consider it pre-Alzheimers. Like he's so
clueless only under such a condition is plausible to normal people.

2. Or he's lost all respect for the electorate and
is so confident of his electablity that he
don't care what any of us think. Maybe he's right. It won't matter because he knows he'll be nominee and they'll fix the diebolds in his favor, after all, I think he made a pact with GWB 2000 to go quietly then on the condition that 2008 is his time.

Yeah, I don't think Farrakhan gets an hour of TV time weekly, sometimes daily, in most markets.

I was suckered into voting for McCain in the 2000 Mich. primary, just because he seemed to reject the usual religious right swine the Republicans have always been sucking up to (and because I had a bad feeling that Bush was psychotic). Now it's obvious that the straight talk express takes more hairpin turns than a mountain road.

Tens of millions have purchased Tim LaHaye's "left behind" novels. A lot of his readers vote, and a lot of those who vote agree with his theology. If John McCain denounces Hagee, by implication he denounces End Times theology. That is not a strategy for holding the votes of the End Times believers, vote he will need in November. Therefore, McCain is trying to thread the needle by accepting Hagee's support while serving notice that he doesn't agree with everything that Hagee preaches.

That isn't enough for Nancy Pelosi and others, mostly Democrats who never will vote for McCain. They're simply playing to their supporters, which is what politicians do. But they're also making religion, and differences in Christian doctrine, an issue in this campaign -- and in doing so, they're taking us another step closer to poisoning our political discourse with sectarian disputes that belong in halls of worship instead of in the halls of statecraft. I prefer leaving that kind of politics to Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

If we find that McCain intends to convert Hagee's more controversial religious holdings into public policy, to have government perform a theocratic function, then Hagee's more interesting beliefs become as issue -- as do McCain's beliefs and judgment (do we want an End Times crackpot answering the red telephone at 3 am?). Until then, the country is better served if the candidates and their supporters focus on health care, the war in iraq, energy, economics, and the rest of the real world issues that affect the lives of voters.

McCain's position on Hagee's endorsement both avoids blessing Hagee's preachings and starting a dangerous debate over religion.