McCain and his Enemies

After kissing up to Falwell, John McCain is now taking money from the Wyly brothers, George W. Bush's former "coyotes," to quote the good senator from a while back. This is what McCain once said of the siblings who are now financing his campaign:

"Are we going to allow two cronies of George W. Bush to hijack this election? Tell them to keep their dirty money in the state of Texas, my friends. Don't spread it all over New England and America."

I'm no purist. The simple fact is that the GOP is now a religious fundamentalist organization, tethered to a corrupt corporate money machine. If McCain has any chance of winning the nomination, he has to come to terms with these forces. Would we rather Brownback or Allen won them over? On the other hand, of course, it is nauseating to see McCain kowtow to a Christianist like Falwell, a man he rightly once equated with Louis Farrakhan in terms of extremism. What would the American mainstream say if Hillary Clinton went to a Farrakhan rally to shore up her "base"? Yet that is exactly what McCain is now doing. My own acid test will be a simple one. What will McCain actually say at Falwell's university? Will he challenge them on their bigotry? Or will he acquiesce to it?