In 2004, a handful of Catholic bishops publicly bashed John Kerry for being pro-choice. That no doubt contributed to Kerry's loss of the Catholic vote, despite his own Catholicism. Democrats took note. So in 2008, a high-ranking Catholic Democratic National Committee official is bashing John McCain over his endorsement this week from John Hagee:
"As a Catholic, I am personally offended by John McCain's embrace of such a divisive figure. I join many others in the Catholic community calling on Sen. McCain to immediately distance himself from Hagee and denounce his remarks," said DNC Executive Director Tom McMahon.
Minutes after the DNC announcement, John McCain issued this statement:
Yesterday, Pastor John Hagee endorsed my candidacy for president in San Antonio, Texas. However, in no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee's views, which I obviously do not.
I am hopeful that Catholics, Protestants and all people of faith who share my vision for the future of America will respond to our message of defending innocent life, traditional marriage, and compassion for the most vulnerable in our society.
The back and forth tells us two things. First, Democrats are no longer content to let Christian conservatives to enjoy a monopoly on alleging religious discrimination. Second, the McCain team is out of its depths in navigating the choppy waters of Christian Right endorsements. Will those two facts make religious voters more likely to embrace Democrats or to choose to stay home rather than pull the lever for McCain? God-o-Meter knows only that the outcome of the race may turn on the answer.
The Tennessee Republican Party issued a press release on Monday questioning Barack Obama's support for Israel. What made headlines, tough, was that the release used Obama's middle name and the Drudge Report photo of Obama in traditional Muslim garb. After coming under fire from some high profile Republicans, like John McCain, the Tennessee GOP expunged Obama's middle name and his photo from the release. Marc Ambinder has the story.
So far as God-o-Meter can tell, this is the first we've heard about the controversy over using Barack Obama's middle name from someone named Obama: at a rally in Canton, Ohio, Michelle Obama called it the "fear bomb." The Chicago Tribune was on the scene:
Michelle Obama, who often has decried "the fear bomb'' that opponents have used against her husband for his middle name -- Barack Hussein Obama -- said in Canton, Ohio, today that it is happening again and shows why it's so important that he wins election as president.
"They threw in the obvious, ultimate fear bomb," Obama said today of her husband's 2004 Senate race. "We're even hearing [that] now. … 'When all else fails, be afraid of his name, and what that could stand for, because it's different.'"
Obama doesn't use his middle name in his public life, and it's not necessary for anyone else to use it to distinguish him from other Barack Obamas.
The only reason to say "Barack Hussein Obama," as radio talk show host Bill Cunningham did repeatedly Tuesday in warming up a John McCain campaign rally in Cincinnati, is to try to excite anti-Muslim, anti-Arab prejudices (though Obama is neither Muslim nor of Arab descent) and not so subtly suggest that Obama's actually a slippery foreigner.
Of even greater interest is Zorn's reporting that both 2004 Obama opponent Alan Keyes and former White House political don Karl Rove concluded that using Obama's middle name would backfire:
"We warned him away from using the middle name," replied Bill Pascoe, Keyes' former campaign manager, when I checked with him to see if my colleagues and I had missed something when coming up empty after plumbing our memories and the news archives.
Pascoe told me he and former top Keyes consultant Dan Proft had steered him away with the admonishment that such a gambit would be "rude, uncivil, needlessly provocative and incendiary."
It's so ugly and so far over the line that Mr. Bare Knuckles himself, Karl Rove, reportedly warned fellow Republicans against it as they contemplated the prospect of Obama being the Democratic presidential candidate this fall. According to an online report by Marc Ambinder, associate editor of the Atlantic, Rove cautioned a private gathering of Republican state executive directors last month that "Barack Hussein Obama" would sound like a rallying cry for bigots.
It's just one line in Hillary Clinton's new Ohio ad, but it caught God-o-Meter because the person voicing it, Buckeye State Governor Ted Strickland, is an ordained Methodist minister:
Knowing that he's one of his party's leading advocates for appealing to evangelicals and other religious conservatives, God-o-Meter was somewhat surprised to hear Barack Obama answer a question about one of his regrets by saying he should have done more...
Yesterday, John McCain received the endorsement of the prominent San Antonio-based Christian evangelist/Zionist John Hagee, an important get in a state where Mike Huckabee threatens to take major evangelical support in next week's primary. So why isn't God-o-Meter's needle going...
As if God-o-Meter needed more evidence that Democrats are embracing the faith organizing tactics of the GOP, it reads today that the IRS is investigating the United Church of Christ for possibly violating its rules against church politicking by featuring...
A document titled "Obama winning the faith vote" just landed in God-o-Meter's inbox, courtesy of the Obama camp's faith outreach director. God-o-Meter wonders whether this might be a case of deceptive labeling. What appeared to be Obama's early advantage among...
Hillary Clinton tried to out-distance Barack Obama from anti-Semitism in last night's debate, noting that when she was endorsed by an anti-Semitic fringe party in New York, she rejected its support, while Obama has denounced Louis Farrakhan in more surgical...
John McCain yesterday repudiated a conservative talk radio host who introduced the presumptive Republican nominee at a Cincinnati rally by taking a few swipes at Obama's middle name. The New York Times captured the scene: Bill Cunningham, who hosts...
Doug Wead, the evangelical former advisor to both Bush presidents, wants to know more about Barack Obama, specifically about his middle name: The Obama dream is intoxicating but who is he? Has he really been vetted? And why can’t we...
This article from Congressional Quarterly is mostly on the dramatic shift among Muslims from the Republican to the Democratic column in the last eight years, but it does suggest that Obama will handily beat Hillary Clinton among Muslims: This year,...
As he mulls a run for Congress in Utah, Mitt Romney's son Josh tells the Deseret Morning News that the Mormon factor mattered in his dad's primary loss largely because Mike Huckabee made it an issue: Huckabee, a Southern Baptist...
You know things are bad when your own Christian Right liaison is saying publicly that there's still lots of work for you to do even as you're sailing toward the nomination. And the AP reports that McCain's top envoy to...
A couple weeks ago, God-o-Meter reported that the progressive group Faith in Public Life, incensed that primary state exit polls failed to ask Democratic voters whether or not they're evangelicals (as those polls do for Republicans) took it upon itself...
Forgive God-o-Meter if it's the only one not to pick up on this earlier. According to New York Times columnist Bill Kristol (that still sounds weird, doesn't it?) Michelle Obama has been saying publicly that Americans suffer from hole-in-the-soul disease:...
Both Huckabee and Dobson are staying mum on what the two spoke about when they sat down together in Colorado Springs this weekend. Here's what God-o-Meter would like to ask them, if it could: Did Dobson ask Huck about his...
After reading this New Republic article, God-o-Meter is convinced that it's not as big a stretch as it sounds. Here's the gist: Obama is the candidate of the new--a "new generation," a "new leadership," a "new kind of politics,"...
While Barack Obama was distancing himself from his pastor's past support for Louis Farrakhan before a Jewish audience yesterday, Farrakhan himself was singing Obama's praises. The AP reports: The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at...
It wasn't on his public campaign schedule, but Barack Obama powwowed yesterday with roughly 100 Jewish activists in Cleveland as part of his ongoing campaign to reassure Jews of his commitment to Israel (he'd formerly been more vocal about his...
How do you like this for timing: On Friday, a new Gallup poll shows that Hillary Clinton has a substantial lead among highly religious white Democrats. On Saturday, the senator from New York sits down with David Brody for 25...
This is big news for Hillary Clinton: a new Gallup poll shows her with a major advantage among religious white Democrats over Barack Obama. God-o-Meter had recently reported that it was Obama's religious outreach that appeared to be paying higher...
Last month, God-o-Meter wrote about Barack Obama becoming the Democrats' Mike Huckabee--a secular preacher. Columnist Kathleen Parker takes the case even further today, seeing in the Obama juggernaut a messiah for today's secular youth: Reports of women weeping and swooning...
As Barack Obama racks up primary victories, Hillary Clinton is making a strenuous case that super delegates, whose support could potentially determine the Democratic nominee, should act according to their consciences and not according to the primary results. The Clinton...
Hillary Clinton's Faith, Family and Values team sent out this clip of the senator's response to the final question of last night's debate, Describe a moment in life when you were tested most. Toward the end of her response,...
Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, argues that the six-million-strong American Muslim community is likely to break for Barack Obama, in a piece brought to God-o-Meter's attention by the Dallas...
God-o-Meter is less sure than The San Francisco Chronicle that Janet Huckabee's stay at Las Vegas's Hooters Casino Hotel will scare of her husband's evangelical supporters--this is a couple that upgraded to a "covenant marriage" a few years back--but it's...
Here's David Brody's take on how today's New York Times story that insinuated John McCain had an affair (without producing any hard evidence) will affect the Arizona senator's attempts to woo evangelicals: Obviously an article like this doesn't help McCain...
God-o-Meter just hung up with Shannon Royce, former executive director of the Arlington Group--a coalition of conservative Christian big wigs hell-bent on stopping gay marriage--and was surprised to learn that she had formally endorsed John McCain. Hardly a household name,...
It's an indirect compliment, to be sure, but Southern Baptist Convention Public Policy chief Richard Land's comments in today's Tennesseean certainly seem to favor Obama: Of the two Democratic hopefuls, Land said that as a conservative Republican he'd rather see...
John McCain's victory speech on the heels of last night's unsurprising Wisconsin win, which had the Arizona senator asserting for the first time that "I will be our party's nominee for President," featured none of the traditional values talk we've...
God-o-Meter caught up the other day with Charmaine Yoest, the Family Research Council VP of communications who left her post last year to become a senior advisor to Mike Huckabee. Yoest returned to FRC last month, when Huckabee’s cash flow...
God-o-Meter can't believe it missed this Slate story several days back. Douglas W. Kmiec, the Catholic legal scholar who chaired Mitt Romney's Committee on the Constitution, makes the Catholic case for Barack Obama. Given that Kmiec is a big deal...
At a rally in Steubenville, Ohio last night, Bill Clinton shouted down a gaggle of pro-life hecklers. Yes, Clinton challenged the pro-live movement's position for criminalizing doctors and expectant mothers. But he also claimed to be more pro-life than...
God-o-Meter carried an item last week about the IRS investigating a California pastor who endorsed Mike Huckabee on church letterhead, an apparent violation of IRS rules against church politicking. Now that pastor, Wiley S. Drake, is striking back. He's calling...
Echoing Hot Air's response to God-o-Meter's op-ed on the Christian Right's failure to help its favored candidate, Mitt Romney, by candidly discussing his Mormonism, conservative Idaho blogger Adam Graham says: I've always looked at a person's values, not their particular...
Over at Hot Air, Bryan has posted a rebuttal to God-o-Meter's USA Today op-ed arguing that the Christian Right helped nominate archenemy John McCain by refusing to discuss the Mormonism of the movement's favored candidate. Bryan argues that GOM and...
For a window onto the debate playing out among evangelicals over whether or not to support John McCain, check out the back-and-forth over at Evangelicals for Mitt, including this post in his defense, excerpted here: [I]f your "troika" of the...
Why isn't John McCain defending himself more forcefully against Christian Right critics by pointing to his decades' worth of votes against any kind of abortion rights? God-o-Meter can't figure it out, but other pro-life advocates have begun making the argument...
When he was in Congress, Ohio Rep. Tony Hall was the dean of the dwindling ranks of elected pro-life Democrats. When President Bush appointed Hall, an evangelical, as ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in 2002,...
God-o-Meter has an op-ed in USA Today arguing that the Christian Right helped secure the GOP nomination for its archenemy, John McCain, by neglecting to have a public discussion about the Mormonism of its favored candidate, Mitt Romney. Check it...
Last week, God-o-Meter noted that Bill Clinton's many church visits appear to be almost entirely to African American congregations. This morning, it noticed that the ex-prez stopped by St. Paul AME in Columbus, OH, whose web site identifies it as...
God-o-Meter recently reported on a new poll by the evangelical group Faith in Public Life that found Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama among white evangelicals in Tennessee and Missouri and that more evangelicals were voting Democratic in those states than...
The same South Dakota Christian activist who devised a plan for Christian Right leaders to back a third party should Rudy Giuliani have gotten the GOP nomination is reprising it for John McCain. Version 2.0 has substantially less support. From...
CBN's David Brody asked evangelical readers of his blog k to write him with their thoughts on John McCain. He got some positive reactions, to be sure, but plenty of them read like this: From Fred (and his wife): We...
God-o-Meter hadn't realized there was a groundswell of Muslim support for Ron Paul, but that is the case, according to Ali Eteraz at altmuslim.com. I have noticed that the amount of fervor that Ron Paul has inspired among Muslims has...
The Christian video site GodTube today released a poll suggesting Barack Obama appeals to more conservative Christians than John McCain. Hillary Clinton comes out ahead of McCain, too. A spokesperson for GodTube told God-o-Meter that the poll was open to...
In this week's Jewish Daily Forward, Senate Majority Whip and Barack Obama booster Dick Durbin writes in to complain about a recent Forward editorial that alleges that Obama worshipped as a Muslim as a child. ... the Forward repeats second-hand...
The Associated Press reports that the IRS is investigating a California-based Baptist pastor who is backing Mike Huckabee for possibly violating its rules against official church endorsements of candidates. God-o-Meter will give the pastor the benefit of the doubt, but...
Rick Santorum is warming up to John McCain. Which means Santorum is deeply skeptical of the Arizona senator, as opposed to being dead set against him. From Today's Philadelphia Inquirer: Conservatives understand just how consequential the 2008 election will be....
Maryland Jews backed Hillary this week, but those in California backed Barack Obama. Jews in New York, New Jersey, Arizona, and Nevada, went for Clinton. Those in Connecticut and Massachusetts went for Obama. It seems that Jews in more conservative...
The AP chimes in on John McCain's weak finish among Virginia values voters yesterday, with Fred Thompson's former communications director blaming it on Huckabee's refusal to leave the race: "McCain will be our nominee and he is starting to consolidate...
Is Mike Huckabee the victim of religious discrimination from the media? In an interview with radio host Dennis Prager, brought to God-o-Meter's attention by the Faith in Public Life blog, Huckabee accuses the press of displaying "soft bigotry" toward...
John McCain won yesterday's primary in Virginia, where a Huckabee victory would have raised another round of questions about what team McCain has claimed is its lock on the nomination. But McCain's win was none too sweet. First there was...
Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich, a former Mitt Romney backer, has endorsed Mike Huckabee. God-o-Meter wants to know: are these protest endorsements or part of a campaign to get McCain to pick Huck as his running mate? Both scenarios seem...
God-o-Meter promises to let go of Mitt Romney soon, but please indulge it another post or two. GOM caught up yesterday with Matthew Spalding, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation who did some advising and speechwriting for Romney—not connected...
Evangelical activist Gary Bauer explains his decision to endorse John McCain in today's Washington Times, but it reads like one more reminder that conservatives just aren't feelin' it: In the wake of John McCain's Tsunami Tuesday victories and Mitt Romney's...
The New York Times makes the important and somehow overlooked point that Hillary Clinton is dominating among Catholic voters, a constituency whose record picking presidential winners has few rivals: Hillary Rodham Clinton has run away with the votes of Roman...
CBN's David Brody has some advice for John McCain from former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed about winning over skeptical evangelicals: First, he should choose a running mate with strong conservative credentials, both on social issues and economic issues....
Miffed that the exit polls commissioned by the TV networks and major news outlets have refused to ask Democratic voters whether they're evangelical/born again Christians, the liberal group Faith in Public Life took it upon themselves to so. This morning,...
The AP just reported that culture warrior Gary Bauer has endorsed John McCain. Anyone else notice how Bauer has been playing good cop to his buddy James Dobson's bad cop all through this election cycle? When Dobson dissed Fred Thompson...
The New York Times caucus blog reports on two more visits to black churches from Bill Clinton in Maryland and Washington, DC, which hold their primaries tomorrow. That follows the former president's visits to three black churches in California last...
As the founder of the blog Evangelicals for Mitt, Nancy French has spent the better part of the last two years trying to convince fellow born-again Christians to back a Mormon for president. A published author who spends most of...
God-o-Meter doesn't totally buy Ross Douthat's New York Times op-ed arguing that John McCain's success among Christian conservatives at the polls shows that the Christian Right's leadership is out of touch with the movement's rank-and-file. After all, Mike Huckabee has...
MSNBC has called Louisiana for Mike Huckabee. Sure, Huck got fewer than three in ten non-evangelical voters. But among Pelican State evangelicals, who make up 58-percent of Republican voters there, Huckabee got nearly six in ten votes. With Mitt Romney...
After Mitt Romney announced his withdrawal from the race yesterday, God-o-Meter phoned Mark DeMoss, a prominent evangelical PR man and Romney backer who spent most of January traveling with the Romney campaign to various primary states. Like others on the...
Gary Marx, the conservative coalitions director for Mitt Romney, spearheaded the campaign’s outreach to the conservative Christian community. After Romney withdrew from the race yesterday, God-o-Meter asked Marx how big the so-called Mormon factor was in stopping Romney candidacy: It...
And not a moment too soon. God-o-Meter doesn't know whether to respect Dobson for declining to back Huck while Mitt Romney was still in the race--sending a message to evangelicals that he remained open to a Mormon and that the...
God-o-Meter just got off the phone with an advisor to Mitt Romney, a longtime conservative activist with strong ties in the movement. Exactly the type of person, in other words, who John McCain needs to win to shore up support...
Was Mitt Romney’s Mormonism a factor in the failure of his candidacy? Definitely. Was it the factor? That's less clear. For all his fundraising success, organizational superiority, and obvious qualifications, Romney was beset with a number of big hurdles throughout...
In announcing he's suspending his candidacy, Mitt Romney sounded every bit the Focus on the Family spokesman that he he's sounded like throughout his campaign: ....Perhaps the most fundamental of these is the attack on the American culture. Over the...
Mark Stricherz from Get Religion just emailed God-o-Meter to take issue with its piece on John McCain's evangelical troubles. Here's what he writes: [Y]our thesis about McCain's electoral woes is overstated. Check out these polls from RealClearPolitics. In head-to-head matchups...
Beliefnet blogger Jim Wallis stopped by The Daily Show yesterday and sounded decidedly bullish on Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's chances with evangelical voters. Here's a snippet, by way of Christianity Today's Liveblog: [Barack Obama is] almost a public theologian....
A day after denouncing John McCain, Focus on the Family's James Dobson said today he'd be willing to vote for Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney. From Focus on the Family Action's daily CitizenLink email update: Around noon today, Dr. Dobson...
Here's something you don't see everyday: an analysis of which kinds of religious voters supported which candidates. Democratic candidates. Here's religion and politics scholar John Green, of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, courtesty of Christianity Today's Liveblog:...
Last night, Mike Huckabee opened his ebullient Super Tuesday speech in Little Rock with this line: Tonight, we are making sure America understands that sometimes one small smooth stone is even more effective than a whole lot of armor....
Do Mike Huckabee’s surprising Super Tuesday victories in the Deep South--where he took Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas and West Virginia--translate into a delegate boost that puts him within reach of the Republican nomination? Almost certainly not, though some of the...
Even as Super Tuesday saw John McCain continue to win more primary battles than his Republican rivals, there is mounting evidence that he’s losing the war with the evangelical base of his own party, raising questions about the Arizona senator’s...
God-o-Meter has noted that in southern states like Georgia and South Carolina, where Barack Obama won landslide victories, he fared best among frequent churchgoers. Among those voters, Obama won two-to-one over Hillary Clinton. But after Clinton was declared victorious in...
John McCain has won New Jersey, but got less than half of conservative and pro-life voters. Same thing happened in New York, which CNN just called for McCain, though he actually lost the conservative vote there to Mitt Romney. McCain...
What happened in South Carolina among Democratic churchgoers happened again in Georgia today: they broke wildly for Barack Obama. With just two percent of precincts reporting, CNN has called the state for Obama. Among those attending church weekly or more...
Here's the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody on James Dobson's McCain denouncement. He sees it as a probable tacit endorsement for Romney. As a former Focus on the Family newsman, Brody would be one to know. I guess my first...
God-o-Meter's Beliefnet buddy David Kuo has this to say about James Dobson's stated rationale for opposing John McCain, which was read today on air by Laura Ingraham: Damn. Is there a more succinct and stunning summation of the reason why...
Can you really blame them? From The Politico: ...overwhelmingly Mormon Utah has taken a profound dislike to the Southern Baptist preacher best known for his nice-guy persona. The wellspring of Huckabee hate is a now-famous Dec. 16 New York Times...
Here's what Focus on the Family founder James Dobson just said in a statement opposing John McCain, according to an email just sent out by the Romney campaign. The statement was apparently released exclusively to the Laura Ingraham show (listen...
Here's Sam Brownback's pro-John McCain piece in today's National Catholic Register, which God-o-Meter announced was coming yesterday. The piece is a response to an earlier Register piece arguing that McCain's pro-life advocacy was lacking. One snippet: I am convinced...
In recent weeks, God-o-Meter has spotlighted John McCain’s revitalized evangelical outreach operation, led by Sam Brownback and his former presidential campaign aides. But one of those former campaign aides tells God-o-Meter that the bigger story might be Brownback & Co.’s...
As if it were needed, more documentation of Mike Huckabee's failure to break out of his conservative evangelical base, by way of The Washington Post: Since a surprising win in Iowa, Huckabee has failed to win a primary or caucus,...
Trying to win over his own skeptical base, and to combat reports that he has criticized Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito for "wearing his conservatism on his sleeve," John McCain plans to use his address this week at the Conservative...
You'd think that having conservative legal luminary like Stephen Calabresi--cofounder of the Federalist Society--editorialize on John McCain's behalf would be a big plus for the Arizona Senator as he tries to mollify his party's social conservative base. But check out...
At the outset, let God-o-Meter note that George Barna, the country's pre-eminent evangelical pollster--in both the sense that he's an evangelical and that polling evangelicals is his specialty--takes an expansive view of who's a born again Christian. That means his...
Think Barack Obama's landslide victory among South Carolina churchgoers allayed the campaign's fears about the false rumors that he's Muslim? Think again. Check out the top of this AP dispatch: BOISE, Idaho - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama assured Western voters...
After endorsing him last week, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has taped a robo-call for Mitt Romney that will go into a handful of Super Tuesday states. Script of the call comes courtesy of Jonathan Martin's Politico blog: "Hello, this...
Bill Clinton spoke at three Southern California church services this morning--and would have done another were it not for Super Bowl plans. From the Los Angeles Times: With Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigning in Minnesota and Missouri, her husband visited...
God-o-Meter has argued more than once that despite his success winning enough evangelical votes to shore up the GOP nomination, John McCain will have a much tougher time mobilizing tens of thousands of religious conservatives--the ones who provided George W....
God-o-Meter doesn't fully buy this AP article, headlined "Romney Opens Up About Mormons," but there's some interesting stuff here nonetheless. Check out this take on an AP-Yahoo poll about how few Republican Mormon skeptics have budged on Romney: An AP-Yahoo...
The only real mention of religion during last night's Democratic debate came from Hillary: WOLF BLITZER: [W]ere you missing in action when Senator Obama and Senator McCain and Senator Kennedy started formulating comprehensive immigration reform? CLINTON: Well, actually, I co-sponsored...
A few weeks after bashing John McCain as "weak on values," former Pennsylvania Senator and Christian Right darling Rick Santorum is endorsing Mitt Romney. Here's Santorum on Laura Ingraham (listen to it here): "I spent an hour and a half...
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The God-o-Meter (pronounced Gah-DOM-meter) scientifically measures factors such as rate of God-talk, effectiveness—saying God wants a capital gains tax cut doesn't guarantee a high rating—and other top-secret criteria (Actually, the adjustment criteria are here). Click a candidate's head to get his or her latest God-o-Meter reading and blog post. And check back often. With so much happening on the campaign trail, God-o-Meter is constantly recalibrating!
God-o-Meter blogger Dan Gilgoff is Beliefnet's Politics Editor. A former political correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, he is author of The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War.
In 2004, a handful of Catholic bishops publicly bashed John Kerry for being pro-choice. That no doubt contributed to Kerry's loss of the Catholic vote, despite his own Catholicism. Democrats took note. So in 2008, a high-ranking Catholic Democratic National Committee official is bashing John McCain over his endorsement this week from John Hagee:
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The Tennessee Republican Party issued a press release on Monday questioning Barack Obama's support for Israel. What made headlines, tough, was that the release used Obama's middle name and the Drudge Report photo of Obama in traditional Muslim garb. After coming under fire from some high profile Republicans, like John McCain, the Tennessee GOP expunged Obama's middle name and his photo from the release. 
So far as God-o-Meter can tell, this is the first we've heard about the controversy over using Barack Obama's middle name from someone named Obama: at a rally in Canton, Ohio, Michelle Obama called it the "fear bomb." 
Yesterday, God-o-Meter asked 
