John McCain yesterday happily received an endorsement from, and then expressed lavish gratitude towards, one of the most hateful and radical evangelical ministers in the country, Pastor John Hagee. As documented in that post, Hagee has a history of making some of the most extreme and twisted statements of any religious figure in the country towards multiple groups of Americans.

Among the many groups which McCain's new associate has targeted for hateful bigotry are Catholics. As a result, The Catholic League today issued a statement -- entitled "McCain Embraces Bigot" -- which pointed out that Hagee:

has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it "The Great Whore," an "apostate church," the "anti-Christ," and a "false cult system."

The Catholic League demanded that McCain repudiate Hagee and his endorsement, just as Barack Obama did earlier this week with Louis Farrakhan (despite the fact that Obama, unlike McCain with Hagee, never sought out or accepted Farrakhan's endorsement).

This is all rather ironic and funny as Bill Donohue and the Catholic League, which is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, are pretty darn hateful themselves. But the Media has treated him as a serious person when attacking Democrats. If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, this is probably not a problem for McCain. But Barack Obama changes that. He is a Media Darling too.

One pitfall for Obama is that playing the renouncing game has never been a good play for Democrats. And Obama will be provided a list of people he will need to repudiate, we have already seen Farrakhan brought to to the discussion by Tim "Pumpkinhead" Russert. But there is no doubt that if Obama is the nominee, the ugliest side of the Republican coalition may see the light of day in this campaign. And that is bad news for John McCain.