One of the most striking parts of Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama was his accusation that Republicans have helped spread the rumor that Obama is Muslim, and turned the word into a smear. “I have heard senior members of my own Party drop the suggestion he’s Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists,” he said.
Some Republicans took umbrage at the comment, saying McCain and Republicans haven’t directly made such an accusation. Jonah Goldberg of The National Review wrote that it was a “low and dishonest blow,” and asked, “is there really much evidence that the GOP or the McCain campaign have had anything to do with the stories that Obama is a Muslim?”
It’s an important question, worth a detailed look.
First, Powell himself noted that McCain himself has never intimated that Obama is Muslim. And he’s right about that. Neither McCain nor Palin have suggested such a thing, or even referred to their opponent as Barack Hussein Obama. At one point, the campaign fired a volunteer who had told voters that Obama is Muslim. A recent video showed rank-and-file McCain supporters chastising an anti-Muslim McCainiac.
Hillary Clinton arguably stoked the rumor more directly than McCain when she said during the primary that Obama wasn’t Muslim “as far as I know.”
What about the Republican Party? There’s no evidence that the national Republican Party has driven, coordinate or even overtly encouraged the Obama-is-a-Muslim line.
Yet the idea has been widely embraced, and not just by a few conservative extremists. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 16% of McCain supporters believe Obama is Muslim – and only 47% of Republicans say he’s Christian (the balance is unsure).
Local Republican parties: There are some instances of local Republican Party officials stoking the idea:

• The Tennessee Republican Party issued a press release about “Barack Hussein Obama” that included a picture of Obama in “Muslim garb.”
• The website of the Clark County, Republican Party in Washington state declared, “Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background. It is reported that Obama swore his oath of office using the Koran….This is chilling information about a candidate for the highest office in the Country especially given the radical Muslim claims that they will destroy American from “the inside.”
• The website of the National Black Republican Association featured an article analyzing “Obama’s Muslim Connections,” which declared, “It’s important to scrutinize Obama’s Muslim background to determine if his Islamic past influences his decisions and actions toward America, including his decision to select an anti-American pastor as his spiritual advisor.”
• Marcia Stirman, chairman of Otero County Republican Women in New Mexico declared in a letter to the local newspaper that Obama is “He’s a Muslim socialist.”

Conservative media: Most important, the idea has been spread by mainstream conservative media — not just a few lonely conservative bloggers in their basement but major conservative publications or figures with large followings:

• A popular conservative website, Newsmax.com, ran a story titled, “Was Obama a Muslim?” and another one, “Obama ‘Lying’ About Muslim Past, Expert Says.”
• Another popular conservative website, wnd.com, ran a piece called “‘Muslim’ photo raises Obama connection questions”
• Human Events – a conservative publication that John McCain just granted an interview to — published an essay entitled, “Our First Muslim President?”
• Insight Magazine, owned by The Washington Times (well read in D.C.’s conservative circles) posted one of the earliest major articles falsely claiming Obama was educated at radical Islamic “Madrassa.”
• Conservative talk show host and bestselling author Michael Savage repeated a commonly-perpectuated myth that Obama attended a “Madrassa”
• Floyd Brown, a conservative activist who created the Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis in 1988, issued a new ad, asking “Was Barack Obama was ever a Muslim?”
• Conservative talk shows – and other cable TV shows, it should be said – gave air time to Jerome Corsi, whose book The Obama Nation argued that Obama has “extensive connections to Islam.” He appeared on Hannity & Colmes to publicize his book and on Sean Hannity’s radio show to argue that Obama has a close connection to a radical Muslim politician in Kenya.
• Hannity also gave substantial TV airtime to Andy Martin, a free-lance activist, who helped originate one of the internet emails arguing that Obama was Muslim.
• Rush Limbaugh more recently added a new wrinkle by arguing that Obama is not African American but rather “an Arab.” Limbaugh did not say Obama is Muslim but many Americans believe that all Arabs are Muslim.

Finally, there’s the matter of the middle name. McCain and Palin have made a point of never referring to their opponent as Barack Hussein Obama, apparently viewing that as an unfair attempt to imply Obama is Muslim or shady in some way. “I absolutely repudiate such comments,” he said, after someone introduced him by using the full name. “It will never happen again.”
But many prominent Republicans and conservatives have, including Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter (she called him “B. Hussein Obama” and “President Hussein”), Mike Gallagher,
and Bill Cunningham. And on two different occasions, McCain or Palin were introduced at rallies by men who used the formulation.
Many conservative commentators say they were merely raising questions or stating facts. And you know what? That’s largely true. Many stuck to the points about Obama that were accurate: His middle name is, after all, Hussein. He was listed as a Muslim as a boy when he attended school Indonesia. His step-father was Muslim.
One could merely repeat those facts and it would lead many to believe Obama was Muslim – especially if one didn’t mention that Obama has been a practicing Christian for 17 years and was in Indonesia for four years, and only until age 10 or 11.
Did the McCain campaign intentionally allow the rumor to spread while having McCain personally take the high ground? It wouldn’t be the first time a presidential candidate took that approach but there’s no evidence so far that McCain or anyone in his campaign opted for that as a strategy.
Also unknown is whether there’s validity to another Powell suggestion. Recall that part of his complaint was that Republicans are pushing the idea that Obama is “Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.” Though he didn’t elaborate, it sounds like he believes the Muslim rumors work hand in hand with the charges that Obama was friendly with former-terrorist Bill Ayers and therefore would be soft on terrorism in general. Did the McCain campaign figure that the Ayers ads would stick better because so many people thought Obama was Muslim and Muslims were terrorists? Several conservative writers have suggested that Obama’s Muslim “connections” or roots would make him soft on terrorism. A Republican mailing, apparently in Virginia, notes that “Islamic extremists want our laws changed, our culture destroyed and our families converted.” After accusing Obama of being soft on terrorists, it then closes with a large headline, “Barack Obama. Not Who You Think He Is.”
We may never know whether senior McCain officials encouraged, discourage or remained silent about Obama-is-a-Muslim idea, or about the Obama = Muslim = Terrorist word association game. But if McCain had wanted to snuff the rumors he would have had to confront the Conservative Media Establishment, which has always been suspicious of McCain and which he desperately needs to get elected.
It’s hard to know exactly how we ended up with less than half of Republicans believing Obama when he says he’s Christian and one in six McCain supporters affirmatively believing that Obama is Muslim. Tellingly, Colin Powell’s complaint was not only that activists made the Obama-is-a-Muslim claim but that “it is permitted to be said” by “members of the party.”
In all likelihood, it was the establishment conservatives who made the ground fertile for the rumors and the more extreme players who then planted the seeds. Once the poisonous plant began to grow, those in the conservative establishment did little to uproot it and sometimes gave it water.
Adapted from Steven Waldman Political Perceptions columns on WSJ.com