Via Ben Smith, a comment on the likely direction of the McCain campaign regarding Jeremiah Wright:
Charlie Black: You know what, what Senator McCain has said repeatedly is that these candidates cannot be held accountable for all the views of people who endorse them or people who befriend them. And fortunately, I heard your report earlier that Senator Obama has repudiated these very unusual views. But John McCain believes is that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton should be held accountable for their public policy views, the things we've described before, big government versus smaller government.
Scarborough: So this isn't an issue for John McCain?
Charlie Black: I don't think Senator McCain wants to get in the middle of a discussion about Senator Obama's former pastor or his faith. He believes that people who endorse you, people who befriend you are entitled to their own views, but you are not held personally accountable. That when somebody endorses you or befriends you, they're embracing your views, the candidates' views, not the other way around.
Indeed.
Unless Obama more forcefully distances himself from Wright (saying he's like a crazy uncle isn't all that forceful), we aren't going to be able to (un-hypocritically) point to McCain's supporters who are racist and/or christianist.
More broadly, we latte-drinking, ivory-tower, etc., liberals don't want to cede the moral high ground that we hold when pointing out that the Republican party has to wed itself to eugenics-loving, flat-earth-believing snake handlers in order to get poor Americans to vote against their economic self interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment