Bauer Rips McCain

Conservative activist and former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer said Wednesday that John McCain should apologize for remarks he made earlier this week attacking religious right leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

"I must in the strongest possible terms repudiate Senator McCain's unwarranted, ill-advised and divisive attacks on certain religious leaders," said Bauer in a statement.

During a speech Monday in Virginia Beach, Virginia, McCain blasted the two conservative Christian leaders as "agents of intolerance,'' and warned his party against "pandering to the outer reaches of American politics."

Bauer has supported McCain since dropping out of the presidential race and was onstage with the Arizona senator when he made the comments. Bauer initially stood by McCain, saying "If this were an attack on Christian conservative voters, I wouldn't be here."

But Wednesday, he called on McCain "to retract his recent statements and apologize to Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell, as well as all men and women of faith."

He condemned McCain's comparison of Robertson and Falwell with the Rev. Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, saying "Such rhetoric serves only to divide the party and place into the hands of the liberal elite material to falsely depict Christian conservatives as intolerant extremists."

He also criticized McCain's later statement, on his campaign bus, that he was trying to battle "the forces of evil," and was hampered by the influence of Robertson and Falwell on the Republican Party.

McCain backed off on that remark Wednesday, calling it "a lighthearted attempt at humor. I did not say or mean to say they are evil."

Presidential rival George W. Bush chimed in, too.

He said he agreed with Bauer that McCain's comparison of the two men with Farrakhan was inappropriate, "but that's the kind of campaign he's chosen to run."