A friend’s Facebook link took me to a CNN article that I thought would infuriate me. The headline was “McDonnell won’t disavow Robertson’s Islam remarks.” What CNN failed to articulate was, to my surprise, that Virginia Governor-elect McDonnell sounded more Madisonian than Robertsonian.

You’ll recall that in response to Nidal Hasan’s shooting rampage at Ft. Hood, Pat Robertson sounded off in his typically ignorant and vicious way by recategorizing all Muslims as violent political actors, not faithful, religious seekers of God’s mercy.

He asserted:

“Islam is a violent–I was going to say religion–but it’s not a religion. It’s a political system. It’s a violent political system bent on the overthrow of governments of the world and world domination…They talk about infidels and all this. But the truth is, that’s what the game is. You’re dealing with not a religion. You’re dealing with a political system. And I think you should treat it as such and treat it’s adherents as such. As we would members of the Communist party and members of some Fascist group.”

So at a press conference this week a savvy reporter, knowing McDonnell would be hard-pressed to disavow Robertson, put him on the spot, asking: “people in Virginia are buzzing about Pat Robertson’s comments about Islam after the Fort Hood shooting. He called it…I believe ‘not a religion but a violent political system bent on world domination.’ He’s given money to your campaign, [you’ve] been asked about him a lot this year, you attended his law school; you’ve appeared with him. Are those comments appropriate?”
Now, truth be told, I would have cheered had McDonnell said something like: “Look, I appreciate everything Pat has done for me, but these comments are wrong. I do not share them. I repudiate them.”

Instead, McDonnell initially deflected the question:
“You know, I’ve got probably 15,000 donors to the campaign. And I can’t, I can’t, stand to defend or support every comment that any donor might make.”

Well that certainly seemed like a punt (or a refusal to acknowledge the controversy at all). What a weak, sleazy politician, you might say, who can’t or won’t stand up to a powerful donor when that donor has gone off the deep end.