Bryan Fischer asks and Tim Pawlenty tells. Why?

It is all over that likely 2012 GOP presidential contender Tim Pawlenty supports the reinstatement of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. While this is interesting in itself, I want to echo Ron Hill, a columnist at the Frum Forum this morning who asks: “Why’s Pawlenty Courting the Anti-Gay Right?”

Good question. More from Mr. Hill:

Pawlenty made his statement on the radio program of Bryan Fischer from the American Family Association, a smart choice if you want to sell a book  to social conservatives. Unfortunately Bryan Fischer also has a long track record of inflammatory and untrue statements.  Here is just one claim Bryan Fischer made in a column on May 27, 2010 during the DADT debate:

Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews. Gays in the military is an experiment that has been tried and found disastrously and tragically wanting. Maybe it’s time for Congress to learn a lesson from history.

Mr. Fischer has also argued that Muslims “should be treated just like neo-Nazis’”, that American Muslims should be deported, and that no Muslim should be able to immigrate to the U.S.

I am more concerned about Pawlenty’s judgment in going on Bryan Fischer’s program than I am his call for reinstatement of DADT.  If Bryan Fischer had made racist or anti-Semitic statements then no respectable Republican would have appeared on his show. How is this any different?

Like Hill, I am mystified at the poor judgment demonstrated by Pawlenty’s appearance on the show of someone who uses the Holocaust as a way to slander his ideological opponents.  I suspect (hope) Bryan Fischer’s fiction will come up in a Q & A somewhere on Pawlenty’s campaign trail.