Remember when McCain was so adamant about the Muslim Brotherhood being excluded from any transitional government in Egypt? Well, apparently he and good buddy Lindsey Graham have changed their collective tune and have a new found adoration for the post-Mubarak regime. Yeah, say what? Adding insult to injury, he now appears to be aiding his fellow progressives across the aisle by attacking conservatives who are attempting to launch an investigation into possible Muslim Brotherhood ties within our own administration! Shouldn't we rely on our elected officials to get to the bottom of any questionable appointments? Apparently, McCain doesn't think so, as well as many other usual suspects. Andrew McCarthy gives us a glimpse of what's going down as a result...
[McCain's]professed anxiety, only a year ago, over the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as his blithe willingness to assume that ElBaradei must be an Islamist coconspirator, are worth remembering today. For the sage has suddenly decided that the Brothers — unapologetic Islamic supremacists who say outright that they are on a “grand jihad” to destroy America and the West — are a pretty swell lot, after all. Instead, McCain reserves his signature “shoot first, think later” ire for the target he has always preferred: conservatives.
The Arizonan took to the Senate floor this week to lambaste five conservative members of the House who, unlike McCain, are actually serious about addressing threats the Brotherhood poses to American interests. McCain’s bipartisan “Islamic democracy” promoters seem content to keep burning through taxpayer trillions until the Brotherhood is finally running every government in the Middle East. To the contrary, the House conservatives — Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Trent Franks (Ariz.), Tom Rooney (Fla.), and Lynn Westmorland (Ga.) — have concluded that the Brotherhood needs to be regarded as the serious anti-American business that it is.
Toward that end, the quintet is justifiably concerned that the Brotherhood’s sharia agenda — the one to which McCain used to be “unalterably opposed” — is being abetted not just by some Nobel-toting Egyptian progressive, but by officials in highly sensitive positions inside the United States government.
One official about whom they raise questions is Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ms. Abedin has been an aide since she interned at the White House in 1996 and was assigned to the then–first lady’s staff. The family tie for which she is best known is her husband, Anthony Weiner, the New York Democrat who resigned from Congress in disgrace last year. But it is Ms. Abedin’s parents and brother who have drawn the attention of the five House GOP members. They all have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood — the organization itself or prominent members thereof.
For pointing this out and merely asking the State Department’s inspector general to look into it and report back to Congress — which is part of the IG’s duties under the statute that created his position — McCain & Co. (i.e., his fans in the left-wing media and his admirers in the Republican establishment) are screaming “smear” and “McCarthyism.” McCain’s antipathy toward conservatives (except during election years) is an old story. And it is no secret that he has long been smitten by Mrs. Clinton, whose transnational-progressive leanings mirror his own.
McCarthy concludes:
Senator McCain is an incorrigible vacillator. It is to be expected that he has “evolved” from last year’s claimed opposition to the Brotherhood to a new position, more aligned with that of his friend Secretary Clinton and the Obama administration. Some of us, however, really are “unalterably opposed” to the Muslim Brotherhood. The five House conservatives are asking questions to which the State Department’s own guidelines, to say nothing of common sense, demand answers. Answers not just about Huma Abedin but, far more significantly, about the government’s policy toward virulently anti-American Islamists. Americans deserve nothing less — even if the usual GOP spaghetti spines would prefer to give them nothing, period.
So now, it'd seem as though McCain, Graham, Rogers, Boehner and their usual establishment cohorts (unfortunately, including Marco Rubio...sigh, there's another demerit) are fine with supporting Democrats, and supplying them with campaign ammunition, instead of backing up their conservative colleagues who are simply seeking the results of an internal investigation. What are these guys afraid of? Better yet, what are they hiding?
Well, when RINOs begin aligning themselves with Democrat progressives to attack conservatives, you can guarantee they've just put themselves on Levin's radar. Here's the Great One discussing this on Friday...
And Rush came out swinging this morning in defense of Michele Bachmann and conservative colleagues: "Now, isn't this what congressmen on the Intelligence Committee ought to be asking if there are national security violations or problems involved in a security clearance of somebody with such close ties to avowed enemies?"
ADDENDUM: Levin had Andy McCarthy on Monday night, discussing the specifics of who and what the Muslim Brotherhood is, exploring why McCain and others have flipped from former adversarial positions to now side with the Muslim Brotherhood, and why McRINO, fellow cohorts and libs have launched a vicious assault against Michele Bachmann and four other conservative allies for routinely looking into those within the State Department who have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Check it out over at theRightScoop.
