John McCain goes on Fox News and, as gigantic jackass not-Steve-Doocy sniffles his complaint about helping Syrian rebels who have been heard to exclaim "Allahu Akbar,"
gets irritated right back:
Would you have a problem with American Christians saying "Thank God, thank God?"—that's what they're saying. Come on, of course they are Muslims, but they are moderates, I guarantee you that they are moderates. I know them and I've been with them. For someone to say Allahu Akbar is about as offensive as someone saying "Thank God."
Hmm. I wonder how far Sen. John McCain will get explaining Muslim culture to the fenceposts of the Fox News team.
There once was a time when conservative leaders took great pains to stifle (rampant) anti-Muslim rhetoric and conspiracy-mongering from the base. That was back when they were trying to start a war in a Muslim country and needed America to not be seen as inherently anti-Muslim by the people we were purporting to help, but those days faded somewhere around the time any group of American Muslims decided they wanted to build a place of worship, oh, anywhere in the country, so today's conservative thought leader is more inclined to be preoccupied with the imminent onset of "sharia," whatever they suppose that to mean, and how to properly prevent "sharia" by implementing more explicitly religious laws.
McCain can be credited with not being part of that particular brigade, though it should be noted that McCain is specifically attempting to stifle Fox News' (rampant) anti-Muslim rhetoric and conspiracy-mongering here because, not coincidentally, he is is a strong advocate of starting a war in a Muslim country and needing America to not be seen as inherently anti-Muslim by the people we are purporting to help, so go figure. (Also, his ability to distinguish between moderate Syrians and terrorists has been called into question, so he is probably not the best teacher on the ways of all things Syria.)
Hey, though: blind squirrel, nut, and so on. What a nice little throwback to the much more polite and reasonable bomb-the-holy-crap-out-of-someone-based conservatism of 10 years ago. McCain realizes what Fox News does not—you can be a bigoted creep or you can bomb people, but doing both at the same time creates a whole raft of problems. I sense the now-raging xenophobia of the base—and of Fox freaking News, not at all coincidentally—is in large part responsible for the remarkable new skepticism among Republicans over the previously uncontroversial idea of bombing the crap out of people. Well, that and the part where it was Obama's idea. Watching them fight over this thing, trying to decide whether the warring bomb people or the we hates all Muslims or the screw Obama factions will guide whatever passes for party thinking these days, has about the same level charm as watching rats trying to cannibalize each other.