If You Endorse Me, Does That Mean I Endorse You?

On March 14, McCain adviser Charlie Black had this exchange on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

Scarborough: Is John McCain troubled by the fact that that man we just heard — and my gosh, there’s so many more sermons just like that, just as inflammatory, but is John Mccain concerned that that man is Barack Obama’s “spiritual adviser.”

Charlie Black: You know what, what Sen. 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.

But, now, not only is McCain criticizing Obama because a Hamas representative endorsed him, vp-wanna-be Mitt Romney is pushing the same line in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, as Think Progress reports.

ROMNEY: I think Barack Obama was more of a blank sheet. I think the primary revealed more about him than perhaps he would’ve liked. The recent endorsement by Hamas of his candidacy is I think the kind of development which people find revealing.

QUESTION: What do you take that to mean?

ROMNEY: Well, I think he’s said in his first year he would be inclined to visit with [Iranian President] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, [North Korean President] Kim Jong Il, [former Cuban President] Fidel Castro. I think they find that appealing.

Don’t these guilt-mongers realize that if one were to look at every person or group that may endorses them, they would be none-too-pleased? (Not to mention that Obama was critical of the Carter-Hamas meeting). In 1980, the hero of the right, Ronald Reagan, was endorsed by the Klan, as the New York Times reported on July 31 of that year. The newspaper of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in calling Reagan its favorite candidate, remarked that the Republican platform “reads as if it were written by a Klansman.”

And Reagan incorporated the Nixonian “Southern strategy”, attempting to win over voters who were angry about the civil rights movement. Dare I say they were bitter Americans who sometimes embraced guns and religion? In 1979, Mississippi national committeeman Michael Retzer suggested that the Neshoba County Fair would be a good place for the Republican presidential candidate to appear and win over “George Wallace-inclined voters.” In 1980, Ronald Reagan, just days before the Klan endorsement, did just that. Yet, I don’t hear anyone blaming Ronald Reagan for having been endorsed by a nefarious group.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.