Is there something wrong with being Muslim? Somebody tell me, because I need to know. I mean, are Muslims nice? Or, can they be? Or are Muslims genetically incapable of goodness…? What is true here? I need to know. Because right now it seems that there is something that some people in America know that I don’t know.
God bless Colin Powell for being a Republican who is willing to at last tell the truth about the 2008 Republican presidential campaign, and for his firm reprimand of far right-wing red-neck bigots who insist on claiming that Barack Obama is a Muslim — and using that as a reason to urge Americans not to vote for him.
Powell, former Secretary of State under President Bush, was interviewed on Meet The Press last Sunday and endorsed Sen. Obama for president. That was significant enough, but what really caught my attention was his denunciation of the Barack-Is-Muslim movement, and of other recent tactics of Republicans during these final moments of the campaign.
Powell said that he was “troubled” by how some of his fellow Republicans were acting. So are a lot of other people. Opinion polls out today show that more and more people – including many Republicans – are deeply disappointed in the way certain party members and leaders are acting.
There’s huge sadness and dissatisfaction with the poisonous robo-calls.
There’s enormous discontent with the constant attacks on Barack Obama’s character, rather than going after him on programs and proposals – and the negative effects that Republicans themselves see this having on the national polls.
And there’s tremendous trepidation, if not downright fear, about Sarah Palin’s real ability to take over the Oval Office should something terrible happen to their Standard Bearer, if he is elected.
AND…nobody “got” that a hockey mom who is trying to court the Joe Six Pack and Joe the Plumbers of the world needed to have the Republican National Committee buy her a hundred and fifty grand worth of clothes to run for vice president. Not a person in the country would have batted an eye if it had come out that the RNC spent ten grand on her clothes. Or even twenty. After all, a candidate has to be spiffed up a little. But a hundred and fifty grand??? I mean, like…whoa. You can buy a small house for that! How must that make the guy in Nebraska who sent the McCain/Palin campaign his last hundred uncommitted dollars feel?
And then there’s this whole Obama-is-a-Muslim thing. Colin Powell in his comments on Meet the Press noted that some Republicans are now saying, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Then General Powell went on to add:

“The correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?”
Apparently there are those – and plenty of them – who would answer “Yes!”, Just as there were many people saying “Yes!” 40 years ago when asked whether there was anything wrong with a Catholic being president. (And just as there probably would be today if the candidate was a Jew.) In many ways the U.S. is a pretty backward country, when you think about it. If this is the “real America” that Sarah Palin is talking about, I don’t want to have anything to do with it that part of America.
So God bless you Colin Powell for having the courage to say it like it is. As a former Army general and Secretary of State, Mr. Powell knows sure and steady and ready leadership when he sees it. He said on Meet the Press that one of his biggest disappointments in John McCain was the latter’s judgment in the selection of Ms. Palin as his running mate. Secretary Powell said that in his opinion (not to be taken lightly) Sarah Palin was neither qualified nor ready to become president of the United States. And being ready to do just that is the job of the vice-president, he noted quietly.
Yes, well, everybody except Palin’s most die-hard “real Americans” has been saying that now for weeks – including some of the most respected conservative journalists and commentators in the country.
I love how, when these same commentators said something negative about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, all the Republicans were quoting them verbatim in every letter to the editor of every newspaper in the country. But now that these same voices are saying that Sarah Palin is simply not presidential material, those Republicans are calling these commentators “elitist.”
Hmmm. Anybody else notice that?
But it’s gotta be tough when the most respected conservative columnists in America are calling Palin woefully under-qualified and “a cancer on the Republican Party.” I mean, if you really, really, really need the GOP in win in this election, where do you go with that????
(Oh, by the way…just for the record….the headline on this article was meant to point out the opinion of some staunch opponents of the Democratic ticket. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with a Muslim becoming President of the United States. Or a Christian such as Barack Obama, for that matter. Yes, even Christians can become President. You see, “real Americans” believe in religious freedom…(ahem) )