McCain and the Pastors

The Left was jolted by the Barack Obama - Jeremiah Wright controversy.

The surest sign of that is the way Leftists have desperately tried to find crazy pastors in John McCain's life.

From the New York Times:

Senator John McCain on Thursday rejected the endorsements of two prominent evangelical ministers whose backing he had sought to shore up his credentials with religious conservatives.

Mr. McCain repudiated the Rev. John C. Hagee, a televangelist, after a watchdog group released a recording of a sermon in which Mr. Hagee said Hitler and the Holocaust had been part of God’s plan to chase the Jews from Europe and drive them to Palestine.

Later in the day, he also rejected the endorsement of the Rev. Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, Ohio, whose anti-Muslim sermons were broadcast on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday.

Controversy has dogged the Hagee endorsement since Mr. McCain announced it at a February news conference, and just last week Mr. Hagee issued a letter expressing regret for “any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.”

In a statement Thursday about the sermon on the Holocaust, Mr. McCain said: “Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.”

OK. McCain condemned the statements from Hagee and Parsley.

He also rejected their endorsements.

Is this over now?

Let's be clear that McCain's relationship with Hagee and Parsley is dramatically different from Barack Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright.

Neither man is McCain's spiritual mentor. Neither man is McCain's pastor. McCain isn't a member of their churches. They didn't marry McCain. They didn't baptize his children.

McCain didn't consider them to be like old uncles.

McCain didn't make a dramatic speech and say:

I can no more disown Hagee and Parsley than I can disown the white community. I can no more disown them than I can my "typical" white grandmother. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

McCain has not defended the controversial remarks of Hagee and Parsley.

He didn't complain that snippets of their sermons were taken out of context and played in an endless loop to distort them. Then, he didn't suddenly announce that he believed Hagee and Parsley showed him disrespect. McCain didn't declare that their relationship wouldn't be the same again.

The spiritual and personal role that Wright played in Obama's life is not analogous to the roles Hagee and Parsley have played in McCain's life. It's not even close.