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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is working hard to make in-roads with evangelical Christian voters ahead of his expected 2012 presidential bid, and he's turned to a controversial figure from the 2008 campaign to help him do that.
On Sunday, Gingrich was the keynote speaker at Cornerstone Church, a San Antonio megachurch headed up by Pastor John Hagee, who offered John McCain a crucial endorsement during the '08 campaign. But McCain later disavowed that support after several controversial comments Hagee had made about the origins of Hurricane Katrina and as well as other religions came to light.
Among other things, Hagee told National Public Radio in the aftermath of Katrina that New Orleans had suffered the "judgment of God" because of its "level of sin." (He later retracted the comment.) He irritated the Catholic League by seeming to refer to the Catholic Church as "the great whore" and "a false cult system"--comments he later apologized for even though he insisted he wasn't referring to Catholics directly. The tipping point for McCain was Hagee's comment that Adolf Hitler had been fulfilling God's will by targeting Jews. (A spokesman for Hagee says his comments were taken out of context.)
"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible," McCain said at the time. "I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."
Newt Gingrich woos evangelicals with the help of a controversial pastor - Yahoo! News