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CHRIS HAYES:
Act one of the whole New York City mosque non-traversy was tragedy. And tonight, I’m here to tell you that we have officially entered act two of the New York City mosque non-traversy. Which is of course, farce. [ROLLS CLIP]
RICK SCOTT:
Barack Obama says building a mosque at Ground Zero is about tolerance. He’s wrong. It’s about truth. The truth—Muslim fanatics murdered thousands of innocent Americans on 9-11 just yards from the proposed mosque. The truth—the leader of the Ground Zero mosque refuses to admit that Muslim extremists use terror tactics. The truth—the fight against terrorism isn’t over. Mr. President, Ground Zero is the wrong place for a mosque.
CHRIS HAYES:
Just yards. I like that. That was Republican gubernatorial hopeful in Florida named Rick Scott. Rick Scott, of course, was last seen running a company that settled the largest Medicare fraud case with the government in history. Today he resurfaced, releasing that television ad, titled, you’ll love this, Obama’s Mosque. Obama’s Mosque, you ask. Where is Obama’s mosque? Does Obama have a mosque? Is Obama a Muslim? Please, tell me more about this Obama mosque. All right, it’s not Obama’s mosque. It is the proposed community center in lower Manhattan that president Obama kind of endorsed. Oh, but it’s not just Rick Scott making a fool of himself over this issue. This has ricocheted from downtown Manhattan to Washington to the great state of Florida and then back up to upstate New York. The heated battle between incumbent Democratic congressman, Michael Arcuri and his Republican challenger Richard Hanna.
The Republican here, unlike so many other of his craven colleagues, came out with a statement of surprising enlightened support for the Islamic community center, affirming the First Amendment. Mr. Hanna saying, quote, it’s extremely easy to understand why people are upset by this, but this country was founded by people who were running away from religious persecution. So how can we become what we have beheld and found contemptible other places? After that statement, the Democrat in this race, apparently smelling political opportunity in the water, came out in vehement opposition to the community center, saying, quote, for the sake of the victims and their families, I think another location should be chosen. That move forced the Republican, who, again, had previously endorsed the Islamic center to promptly change his mind. He also immediately reversed himself and declared that he, too, was now against the community center. If you can’t sense what’s coming next, then you obviously haven’t been following the farcical politics very long. Because Republican Richard Hanna was then denounced as a flip-flopper by his opponent’s campaign. A flip-flopper on what’s apparently the most important issue of our day. Profiles in courage all around here, gentlemen. I said last night that the mass hysteria over this Islamic community center was like a long bender that we’ll one day look back on and feel ashamed of when it’s over. And I was wrong in one crucial aspect. Which is that it’s already embarrassing. And the bender is still not over yet. The latest organization that’s blatantly trying to eek whatever political gain possible out of this is the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Yes, the NRSC, which is now apparently being run by a non-traversy obsessed spambot, check out this series of press releases turned out by the NRSC yesterday. Where does David Lee Fisher stand on the Ground Zero mosque? Where does Michael Bennet stand on the Ground Zero mosque? Where does Alexi Giannoulias stand on the Ground Zero mosque? And on and on and on. More than a dozen straight press releases demanding to know where these Democrats stand on the most important issue of the day. Now this is not to say there haven’t been various outbreaks of sanity here. There’s actually been a number of Republicans who have come forward to criticize their own party over what has unfolded. [ROLLS CLIP]
MARK McKINNON:
Usually Republicans are forthright in defending the Constitution and here we are, you know, reinforcing al-Qaeda’s message that we’re at war with Muslims. I think it’s a very short-term strategy with long-term consequences for the party.
JOE SCARBOROUGH:
This is madness. There are elements of our party, Mark, that are marching through the fevered swamps of ideology and I say that as an intense, hard, hard-charging, small-government conservative.
MICHAEL GERSON:
I don’t think this kind of rhetoric, this broad-brush rhetoric, about Islam, I think it actually undermines the War on Terror in many ways. I think that’s really playing with fire. It’s very, very dangerous.
CHRIS HAYES:
These are prominent Republicans calling out fellow Republicans for how they have acquitted themselves from this whole farcical non-traversy. Today, yet more Republican on Republican backlash over this issue. This time in a letter to Republicans written by a group of prominent Arab and Muslim Americans. A letter that reads in part, quote, we are deeply concerned by the rhetoric of some leading members of our party surrounding the construction of the Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan. While we share the desire of all in our party to be successful in the November elections, we cannot support victory at the expense of the U.S. Constitution or the Arab and Muslim community in America. Joining us now is one of the signatories to that letter. Suhail Khan, he’s a chairman of the Conservative Inclusion Coalition. He’s also a former senior political appointee in the George W. Bush Administration. Mr. Khan, thank you so much for joining us tonight. I really appreciate it.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Thanks for having me.
CHRIS HAYES:
First of all, I wanted—I wonder, well, I guess I know the answer to this, but I’ll ask it anyway. Why did you and your colleagues decide to write this letter to your fellow Republicans?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Well, for—since the days of 9-11, we’ve seen that there’s been a simmering boil of anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate from the fringe in our country and, unfortunately, that’s been there, but responsible leaders in both parties have been ignoring that fringe. But, unfortunately now, we’ve seen that responsibility has gone away and now the leadership is embracing some of this hateful rhetoric. And it’s just disgusting and shameful.
CHRIS HAYES:
Disgusting and shameful is pretty close to how I feel about watching this unfold. Can you explain to me why this is happening now? I mean, I’ve really been shocked, I have to say—and there are figures like George Pataki, former governor of New York, who I never sort of took to be some big culture warrior. Newt Gingrich, even, for all my disagreements with him, I’ve been surprised at the role he’s played. What is going through everybody’s mind? Why is everybody doing this?
SUHAIL KHAN:
I think, unfortunately, it’s just short-term partisan gain. That’s what people are looking at. I think for eight years in the last administration under George W. Bush and for the last year and a half under Obama, we’ve had responsible leadership that’s been reminding Americans that the attacks on our country on 9-11 were not by a whole faith community. That we shouldn’t go down the dark days that we did, unfortunately, in the past with the Japanese-Americans and others by trying to paint a broad brush. Unfortunately, again, that fringe element that wants to—wants to have a war and a clash of civilizations has unfortunately taken over to a certain degree and that’s why my colleagues and other responsible adults want to stand up and say enough. We need to stand up against this and we need to be united as Americans as we go forward.
CHRIS HAYES:
Your former boss, President George W. Bush, has a book that’s going to come out in the fall. I think today he gave a no comment on this. I wonder if you think he’s the kind of voice that could actually stand up and say, hey, this is really insane. Let’s cool it here.
SUHAIL KHAN:
We would—we would welcome that. He was a voice of reason after 9-11 as you recall, reminding Americans that this was not a war on Islam, but a war on terrorists. That the terrorists tried to hijack a great faith. And time and time again, he made a very important effort to visit the Islamic centers and to remind Americans again that this is not something that we need to go down. And it would be great if he came out—if you remember even in the 2008 cycle, Colin Powell stood up when there was a lot of this chatter going on in the internet around Barack Obama, then candidate Obama, and he stood up as a man of principle and said, this has got to stop. So it would be wonderful. We’re seeing some good people come out and make these positive statements. You showed those in the beginning of this segment. But we need more so that we can really kind of head this off at the pass because, as you said, it’s just morphing into—from bad to worse.
CHRIS HAYES:
Final question here. I know you call yourself a conservative and I know you are a conservative, you’re a Republican. To me, watching this as a—not a conservative, it seems like this isn’t just incidental to conservatism. That this kind of tribalist ethos, this sort of populist nationalism against this other is actually pretty deep in what conservatism is. And I wonder if you look around and say, do I want to be on the same side as these people?
SUHAIL KHAN:
I disagree with you on that. I think, you know, the conservative principles that I’ve always been drawn to is individual liberty, religious freedom, the respect for personal property, for private property, state and local control and these are issues that are all at play in this controversy and I just want to remind my fellow conservatives and all Americans that—let’s stick to those time-honored Constitutional principles of individual liberty and we’ll be fine. I really think this is just a bigotry blip and I hope that we’ll beat this and we’ll rise above it as we have in the past. I just hope that we can do it quicker than later.
CHRIS HAYES:
Bigotry blip. A wonderful coinage by Suhail Khan. A hopeful one. Chairman of the Conservative Inclusion Coalition. Former Bush Administration senior political appointee. Thank you so much for your time tonight.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Hey, thanks for having me.