ith sugar this sweet, John McCain's campaign was headed for diabetic shock. It came this week. In a speech intended to bust some chops on the Christian far right, McCain called Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson ''agents of intolerance'' who are ''an evil influence'' over the Republican Party.
''To stand up and take on the forces of evil, that's my job ... You're supposed to tolerate evil in your party in the name of party unity? That's not what the party is all about.'' McCain later apologized for the references to evil, saying they had been intended as a joke.
The McCain confectionery has many moderate Democrats and even Massachusetts liberals crossing over to vote for this Republican in the primaries. Like ''There's Something About Mary,'' the movie in which an eclectic group of guys woo a woman merely on her sweet looks, McCain's town hall rapport, POW record, and railings against big money have voters salivating for more sugar. Few are yet reaching for the insulin.
There is something about McCain. But it is not sweet or pretty. Here is the real ''straight talk.'' He opposes abortion, bans on assault weapons, gun waiting periods, hate-crime laws, affirmative action, federal funds for the arts and public broadcasting, and bans on job discrimination against gay people.
McCain says his favorite current Supreme Court justice is its most conservative, Antonin Scalia. He supported the Contract With America, which would have given massive tax cuts to wealthier Americans while slashing Medicare and Medicaid for the poor and elderly and cutting aid to education and the environment.
McCain spoke about intolerance and evil in the Republican Party, yet he tolerates intolerance and evil in his own campaign. Two weeks ago in the South Carolina primary his top campaign strategist was Richard Quinn. Quinn, a guru for the likes of Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond, and, yes, Pat Robertson, is the editor of the quarterly magazine Southern Partisan.
Southern Partisan clearly wishes the South could return to a civilization before civil rights and the Civil War. A few newspapers and magazines and the People for the American Way have taken an interest in Quinn's employment by McCain. But the connection has not yet forced him to weather the national scolding that forced George W. Bush to issue a statement of regret about his speech at the racist, homophobic, and anti-Catholic Bob Jones University.
This is interesting, since employing Quinn is at least as bad as employing Falwell or Robertson. Quinn has said that slave masters kept slave families together for their ''peace and happiness.'' He has said that ex-slaves who stayed tied to their former masters, assumedly as demeaned sharecroppers, were better off ''than their cousins who ended up sleeping with rats in Harlem.'' Southern Partisan has said that ex-Ku Klux Klan leader and politician David Duke was ''a populist spokesperson for a recapturing of the American ideal.'' It recently praised a book that said, ''No one can doubt the effectiveness of the original Ku Klux Klan. Without it we might never have shaken off the curse off the carpetbag, scalawag governments which bound us hand and foot.''
A Partisan column said, ''Negroes, Asians, and Orientals (is Japan the exception?), Hispanics, Latins, and Eastern Europeans have no temperament for democracy, never had, and probably never will.'' Quinn called the Martin Luther King Day ''vitriolic and profane.'' While praising Duke, Quinn called Nelson Mandela a ''terrorist.'' His magazine said God gave South Africa to the Afrikaners against the ''bloodthirsty savages.'' Another column said AIDS is God's way of punishing homosexuals, ''the most repulsive desecration in the sexual order.''
With Quinn around, it is no wonder that McCain matched Bush's lily liver in refusing to criticize the Confederate flag. McCain says the Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln. But Southern Partisan says Lincoln was a traitor, selling Lincoln T-shirts with the ''Sic semper tyrannis'' (''Thus always to tyrants'') that John Wilkes Booth shouted in assassinating Lincoln.
For months now, McCain has screamed a ''Sic semper tyrannis'' against big money and politics as usual. But his association with Quinn might put a chill in people the next time McCain is referred to as the ''insurgent'' candidate.
McCain claims to know nothing about Southern Partisan and Quinn's views. This worked in South Carolina. But he did not quit while he was ahead. Having been a mere coward in South Carolina, he now speaks about intolerance as if he wants to steal the label of compassionate conservative from Bush.
Some people might consider that sweet food for thought, given the Republican Party's aid and comfort to bigots. Until McCain stops doing business with the likes of Richard Quinn, his words are empty calories.
There is indeed something about McCain. Promising us sugar, he delivers to us at least one top campaign strategist who would return America to a bitter yesteryear. So much for ''straight talk.''
Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist.
