John Lewis’s Toxic Race Charges Against McCain

At The Saddleback Church’s Civil Forum on The Presidency last August, Pastor Rick Warren asked John McCain, “Who are the three wisest people you know that you would rely on heavily in an Administration?”

Senator McCain answered, in part:

I think [Congressman] John Lewis.  John Lewis was at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Had his skull fractured.  He continues to serve.  He continues to have the most optimistic outlook about America.  He can teach us all a lot about the meanings of courage and commitment to causes greater than ourselves.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama was the site of a violent, 1965 incident, since named Bloody Sunday, an attack by Selma police on a peaceful, civil rights march.  John Lewis, who was then President of a civil rights group, The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, was one of the leaders of the protest.

This weekend Congressman Lewis decided to repay John McCain’s reverential expression of respect and admiration by joining the latest Obama-Media coordinated assault, the utterly baseless claim that John McCain’s campaign has become racist and hateful.

Here are excerpts from Congressman Lewis’s remarks, posted on his website:

“As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign.  What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history…During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate.

George Wallace never threw a bomb.  He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights.  Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

“As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all…

A later item on the same website, titled “clarification” says…

A careful review of my earlier statement would reveal that I did not compare Sen. John McCain or Gov. Sarah Palin to George Wallace.  It was not my intention or desire to do so.

Congressman Lewis claims he didn’t compare McCain and Palin to George Wallace, a virulent segregationist who was Governor of Alabama and a third party candidate for President in 1968.  But he sure tried to plant in the mind of the reader/listener the impression that John McCain was acting like George Wallace, going so far as to associate the McCain’s “tone” with the murder of four children in a church bombing.

Lewis’s incendiary remarks are outrageous.  We’ve certainly criticized some of John McCain’s statements and ideas.  But no honest person would characterize McCain as anything other than an honorable and decent human being.  These odious intimations, that Barack Obama has not denounced, are truly disgusting.

Apparently, we’re witnessing an effort by the political-media establishment to convince undecided voters that anyone with the temerity to vote against The One, Barack Obama, is a pernicious racist, who would even condone bombing churches and murdering children.

John Lewis deserves the respect of a grateful nation for his courageous leadership in the Sixties campaign to dismantle the legally sanctioned segregation that was a cancer on America.  But his participation in this coordinated smear of Senator McCain and Governor Palin is shameful.