Tim Russert focused like a laser beam on a nonexistent connection between Barack Obama and Louis Farrakhan. Maybe if he insinuates himself into a general election debate as a 3rd participant he can ask John McCain about his very real connection with white supremacists.
In 2005, John McCain endorsed George Wallace, Jr. (son of the noted segregationist Governor) as a candidate for Lt. Governor in AL. Atrios covered this at the time, saying:
"I'll never understand certain liberals love affair with John McCain. I'll set my bar slightly higher than "not as obviously incompetent and evil as George Bush" thank you.
Now we find out that McCain is speaking at a fundraiser for George Wallace, Jr, someone who gave a speech to the Council of Conservative Citizens four times, including once this year.
From their statement of principles:
We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."
Atrios also linked to the SPLC's assessment of Wallace, Jr.:
"The younger Wallace, whose official resumé boasts of an NAACP Freedom Award [me: huh?], opened up the first day of the annual national convention of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a group whose Web site has referred to blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity."...
There is little debate that the CCC is a racist group. In fact, the head of the Republican National Committee in 1999 warned party members to avoid the group after the Southern Poverty Law Center published an exposé detailing its racism...
In the audience listening to Wallace were a number of leading white supremacists. They included Don Black, proprietor of Stormfront.org, the most influential hate site on the Internet, and former Alabama grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; Jamie Kelso, right-hand man and Louisiana roommate of former Klan leader David Duke; Jared Taylor, editor of the neo-eugenicist American Renaissance magazine; Ed Fields, an aging white supremacist leader from Georgia; Alabama CCC leader Leonard "Flagpole" Wilson, who got his nickname shouting "Keep Bama white!" from atop a flagpole during University of Alabama race riots in 1956...
Wallace could not immediately be reached for comment. Later, he told The Associated Press, "There is nothing hateful about those people I've seen." He said he welcomed the delegates and spoke about his family and conservative values.
This was not Wallace's first flirtation with the CCC, a group that has grown more openly radical and racist in recent years. Wallace, who was Alabama state treasurer between 1986 and 1994 and was elected to the Public Service Commission in 1998, gave speeches to the CCC once in 1998 and twice during 1999."
I'm not holding McCain responsible for everything the CCC says or does...but isn't it worth asking why he endorsed someone like Wallace, who is clearly tight with the racists?
Didn't McCain also speak at Bob Jones U.? I remember he flip-flopped on his view of the school.
There is surely more out there as well..I just don't have time to look