A PARTY WITHOUT GROWN-UPS…. The Weekly Standard reports today that three U.S. senators have come out against a proposed Muslim community center in Manhattan: Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Hopes that a Republican grown-up will help bring some decency and maturity to the party continue to fade.
Isakson said he has “a serious concern that [the community center] serves any good purpose.” I have no idea what that means. McCain said a community center “would harm relations.” Whatever.
And what about Snowe, one of the ostensible “moderates”?
Snowe’s concern with the proposed project lies with the families of those who were murdered by the terrorists in the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center. “I think there should be particular sensitivities to the families,” Snowe told me as she was getting on an elevator after the Senate voted to confirm Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. “It is insensitive to the families.”
Whose families? Why would any victims’ families be bothered by a religious leader committed to fighting extremism building a community center?
All of this, again, is predicated on the notion that there are no distinctions to be made between Islam and radical terrorists who embrace a twisted version of Islam. This is what Osama bin Laden and other lunatics hope to see from the West, and this is what Republicans continue to offer.
