Fire Away

Earlier today, the co-chairman of "Veterans for Rudy in New Hampshire" made a rather impolitic remark on how Rudy was the guy who will "chase them [Muslims] back to their caves or in other words get rid of them."". Kind of indicative of the sort of fellow who supports Rudy Giuliani, but I figured that the story would take a predictable course: the speaker would backtrack, saying that he only meant "Islamofascists" or something of the like, Rudy would disavow him, and the guy would quickly decide to spend some more time with his family.

Instead, when contacted for a follow up, the man in question, John Deady, stood by his comments and expanded on them:

"I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims," Deady told me by phone from his home in New Hampshire. "They're all Muslims."

Yikes! He did, however, clarify that when he said "get rid of them", he "wasn't necessarily (!) referring to genocide." Which is good, I suppose, though I'd rather he dropped the "necessarily" entirely. But nonetheless, this is absolutely extremist territory. What should Giuliani do about Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress? Should he be forced to take a Glenn Beck-style loyalty test? How about Israel's Muslim cabinet Minister -- does he need to be chased back into a cave?

Nobody is saying that this is Giuliani's actual beliefs, but given the flap over Clinton campaign surrogates saying the word Madrassa, shouldn't this be somewhat of a big deal? Thus far, the Giuliani campaign has no comment. If they don't have a comment within 24 hours along the lines of "we deplore these sentiments and totally disassociate ourselves from them", there better be some hard questioning going on about -- at the very least -- whom Giuliani feels comfortable associating with.

UPDATE: Mr. Deady has offered his resignation, and the Giuliani campaign has accepted.