I am beginning to wonder if it isn’t an act. Maybe Frank Gaffney is genuinely insane. He’s very well-educated. He has an undergraduate degree from Georgetown and a graduate degree from Johns Hopkins. Both degrees involved international affairs. He’s not ignorant. He’s got quite a strong neo-conservative pedigree, having worked on Scoop Jackson’s staff and served under Richard Perle in Ronald Reagan’s Defense Department. For a long time I just thought he was saying whatever would serve neo-conservative ends. But he’s now in an open rift with other neo-conservatives like Bill Kristol, who basically thinks that Gaffney and Beck have taken their Islamophobia to absurd and destructive lengths.
Gaffney has dabbled in birtherism, he’s accused the president for two years now of advancing the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda, and he’s intimated that the president wants to install Shariah Law in the United States. And now he’s telling people that the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has “come under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is working to bring America under Saudi-style Shariah law.” He’s blaming Grover Norquist, of all people, of being a mole for jihadists.
For six years now Gaffney has been promoting bio-fuels and fuel-efficiency because he hates letting Muslims get any of our petrodollars. It’s nice to have an ally for combating climate change, but sheesh.
I think Chris Matthews should drop Gaffney from his Hardball rotation. If he needs a guest to come and talk out of his ass about the Middle East, I’m available. And I promise not to make anything up.
