McCain to Speak at Falwell's Liberty University

The Lynchburg News & Advance has the story on everybody's favorite moderate who isn't.

U.S. Sen. John McCain - a likely 2008 presidential candidate who once labeled the Rev. Jerry Falwell an "agent of intolerance" - will be Liberty UniversityÂ’s graduation speaker on May 13.

"“I was in Washington with him about three months ago," Falwell said. "We dealt with every difference we have. There are no deal breakers now. But I told him, "‘You have a lot of fence mending to do."

Falwell, LU'’s chancellor, said McCain, an Arizona Republican, is among the presidential candidates he could support in 2008.

I must say that back in the long gone days of 2000 or so, I kinda liked John McCain. I wasn't about to vote for him, but I felt that if he were the Republican Party's nomination, the nation wouldn't be screwed if he won. (I had no such faith in 'Dubya.')

The more I paid attention to McCain, and especially over the last five years, the less I liked him. However, the majority of the electorate does not and will not pay that much attention, even during the 2008 Presidential Election. McCain will still have his (undeserved) 'outsider' status. He won't have to face questions about the conduct of the Bush Administration.

McCain'’s visit to the LU campus is, at the very least, an attempt to make peace with conservative Christians prior to the presidential campaign.

While running against then- Gov. George W. Bush in the South Carolina and Virginia primaries in 2000, McCain denounced Falwell and Virginia Beach televangelist Pat Robertson in what was seen as a move to lure more moderate voters to his campaign.

"“Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right,"” McCain said at the time.

McCain lost the Virginia and South Carolina primaries and Bush won the nomination.

McCain has learned his lesson. If you want to be president, you have to be an 'agent of intolerance.' Watch McCain slowly speak the code to the fundies while stile wearing the clothes of a moderate.

John McCain is the candidate we should be most worried about in 2008.

John McCain Jerry Falwell Liberty University