Politix Makes Strange Bedfellows, Part the Bazillion

Poor John McCain ~ not only has Bush declared him heir presumptive of some messy, perpetual, mind-bogglingly botched Wars on Terra in Any Place That Has Oil, he's also saddled himself, inadvertently, we're sure (he's the straight talker, the morality man, what?) with lobbyists for special interests running his "maverick" anti-special interest campaign for the presidency.

(While protesting repeatedly there was not anything improper in his relationship with a pretty little young blonde lobbyist on whose company's behalf he wrote letters urging Congressional action!) ~ but never mind, the weak NYT story about it convinced people who are inclined to believe such things anyway that there's a vast librul conspiracy in the MSM to destroy the GOP and McCain turned it all to his advantage in the form of a giant, very successful fundraiser! Hip, hip, hooray!

Apparently emboldened, McCain goes on to embrace a second group that's so far been a boon to and willing fodder for exploitation for the GOP: right-wing Christians ~ er, ultra right, uber right wing, so far out there it is with great trepidation that we should even be calling them "Christians."

I know all this because I read blogs ~ Glenn Greenwald:

"The McCain/Hagee story is growing, though still not as much as it ought to. My new friends from the Catholic League emailed earlier to advise that Bill Donohue was being interviewed for tonight's program of The Situation Room on CNN. Blogs at The Washington Post and ABC News today covered the growing scandal from the anti-Catholic bigotry perspective, with the latter actually featuring the unbelievably inflammatory You Clip -- found by Ann Althouse, which I posted yesterday and which is now being distributed by the Catholic League -- of a shirt-sleeved Pastor Hagee spewing the creepiest, most hateful bile imaginable about Catholicism ('This is the Great Whore of Revelation 17').

"As The Post noted, Catholics United, a less reactionary group than the Catholic League, has now also denounced McCain's warm embrace of Hagee and demanded that he repudiate his endorsement. Thus far, it is Hagee's anti-Catholicism which is being featured -- largely because when Bill Donohue issues press releases, the media jumps to cover it. While that angle has substantial political ramifications -- Karl Rove identified the Catholic vote in 2004 as the most vital to the GOP's electoral successes -- the reality is that Hagee's hateful and twisted extremism extends far beyond that realm.

"In sum, John McCain has aligned himself with one of America's purest -- and most powerful -- haters, and that ought to be the story here. [...]

"As has been noted many times, most recently today by Matt Yglesias, Hagee's so-called 'commitment to Israel' actually means that he wants Israel united so that the Rapture can happen and all Jews, including Israelis, will be slaughtered and sent to hell. And the 'spiritual leadership' which McCain heralds consists of calling the Catholic Church the 'Mother Whore' and a 'cult' and arguing that Hurricane Katrina, which resulted in the devastation of tens of thousands of lives, was God's punishment against New Orleans because it scheduled a gay pride parade that week. " http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html

Yet, despite it all, your Demon is not feeling particularly concerned about any of this. Why? Because after 8 years of Bush-Cheney and a lock-step GOP Congress, the results speak for themselves, and I (scientifically) prophesy that any GOP candidate has less than .0000001-1/2 chance of a snowball's in hell of getting elected. The somnambulent American public seems to have woken up.

So McCain may have to ally himself with a darker power than radical right wing Hagee to pull this one off ~ though by some lights Hagee is indeed doing the Dark One's work by calling the Catholic church a "cult," and praying for Armageddon so the Christ-hating Jews will all be destroyed ~ my vote for the most powerful personification of evil incarnate here right now would be some Beast with the head of Karl Rove, the deranged and evil mind of Dick Cheney and the bombastic rhetorical wiliness of Antonin Scalia.

Oops! McCain already has that Beast's support. Maybe Hagee is the better bet.

What a shame! I once liked McCain, believe it or not.

Bonus funny for those who've made it this far: Number 40 on Stanley Bing's List of 50 Bullshit Jobs: Political Reverend. Also making the top 50: Talking head/pundit (exemplified by Robert Novak) comes in a number 46, just before velvet-rope Nazi.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/bing/0704/gallery.bing_50jobs.fortune/40.html