The Truth About Hagee

Now, McCain has renounced Hagee so this may be a moot point, but I want to correct a false narrative that was starting to get around. Conservatives who were forced to defend McCain for his former endorsement simply decided to underplay the amount of influence Hagee has and try to make him seem like he is a fringe figure. This of course is simply not true as Hagee had enough notoriety for not one, but two journalists to do investigative work about him and his church.

Bill Moyers did a piece about Hagee and Christians United for Israel which aired on October 5, 2007. Mr. Moyers pointed out the fact that Hagee’s church had a congregation of 18,000 members as well as the 99 million homes which he reaches with his weekly radio broadcast. He also points out that McCain, Lieberman, and Warner were all lobbied by CUFI. Lieberman described Hagee as:

“an ‘Ish Elokim,’ a man of God and those words really do fit him; and, I’d add something else, like Moses he’s become the leader of a mighty multitude, even greater than the multitude that Moses led from Egypt to the promised land.”

The other journalist who profiled Hagee is Matt Taibbi, who is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He went undercover into Hagee’s church and writes about it extensively in his book The Great Derangement. He describes a scene where Hagee explains his view of environmentalists:

“They want to use the environment to force America to reduce its population. And how do they want to do that? Through abortion.”

It’s no longer a campaign issue, but people shouldn’t ignore the fact that a lunatic like Hagee has enough influence that McCain felt it was worth pursuing his endorsement just because he has denounced him. It means McCain certainly disagrees with Hagee(which was obvious anyway) but, Hagee is still something which needs to be addressed by the larger civil society. He’s excercising his freedom of speech which is good, but extremists like Hagee need to be fought by disseminating the truth.

McCain Campaigns With President Bush

It’s not exactly shocking but, today Senator McCain is going to utilize the President in closed-door fund raisers. In addition to simply having Bush raise money for him, McCain will also appear with President Bush at once of said fund raisers. McCain is still feebly trying to maintain his image as a “maverick” but yet again it’s clear that he’s a standard issue Bushie. Predictably, the White House has jumped to McCain’s defense. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino has said:

“President Bush isn’t on the ticket, at the end of the day, any candidate who’s running for office has to stand on their own two feet. They have to chart a course for themselves. Every election is about change.”

Change is certainly something McCain is familiar with. He was against the Bush tax cuts before he was for them. He was against the “agents of intolerance” like Jerry Falwell before he spoke at Falwell’s university. He says he supports Veteran’s Benefits yet voted against Jim Webb’s GI Bill. He said success will be “easy” before saying he knew it was going to be “long, and hard, and tough.” He said the Confederate Flag was a symbol of racism and slavery before saying he saw it as a symbol of heritage. He said Americans are better off than they were 8 years ago(ie: before Bush) before he said that we’re not. He said that if he had been President during Hurricane Katrina he would have been in New Orleans helping solve the problem. Senator McCain was celebrating his birthday with President Bush.