Today on CNN, Newt Gingrich applauded the central tenets of McCarthyism to justify his support for Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) baseless campaign to root out alleged Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government.

Host Wolf Blitzer singled out Bachmann target Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, telling Gingrich that it’s “ridiculous” to include her and that the whole thing reeks of McCarthyism. But the former House Speaker — and Mitt Romney supporter — wouldn’t back down, praising McCarthyism for rooting out communists and defending Abedin’s inclusion in Bachmann’s witch hunt. “This State Department has been amazingly pro-Muslim Brotherhood,” he said, “American citizens have the right to have the Congress ask the question.” Watch the clip:

Bachmann has been widely criticized for her anti-Muslim campaign, including by some top Republicans, particularly for singling out Abedin. But the Minnesota congresswoman has yet to offer substantial proof of any Muslim Brotherhood plot. In fact, actual members of the Islamist group have recently lamented that they can’t even take over the Egyptian government.

Clinton recently praised the Republicans who spoke out against Bachmann and today, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan denounced the campaign as well. “I have no idea of what it is that they are making reference to, and I’m not even going to try to divine what it is that sometimes comes out of Congress,” he said.

Frank Gaffney and his lawyer sidekick Andrew McCarthy hosted a National Press Club event today to defend Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) anti-Muslim witch hunt alleging a supposed Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government. It appears Bachmann and her GOP colleagues got wind of these completely unsubstantiated claims from Gaffney and McCarthy, who both feature prominently in Fear, Inc., CAP’s report on Islamophobia in America.

The duo didn’t offer any new evidence on this supposed Muslim Brotherhood plot, but McCarthy awkwardly got caught denouncing his partner Gaffney’s claims — with Gaffney standing right next to him — that Obama “may still be a Muslim” as “nutty”:

NICK SEMENTELLI, FAITH IN PUBLIC LIFE: Mr. Gaffney doesn’t believe that Obama was born in the United States also he says there’s mounting evidence that he may still be a Muslim, do you agree with those claims? [...]

MCCARTHY: [I]f somebody wants to run a nutty theory that Obama is a Muslim because at one time he may have been in his childhood was raised as one, which I don’t know to be true either, then you know, good for them but I think it’s a stupid thing to do.

Sementelli pressed to McCarthy to address Gaffney’s birtherism but he wouldn’t bite. “I’m not going to do the birth certificate. I’m here to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood,” McCarthy said. Watch the clip:

Aside from wondering whether Obama is “still” a Muslim, Gaffney does regularly flirt with birtherism. “An issue that isn’t being given the attention that it needs to be by the mainstream media,” Gaffney said just as recently as last June, “namely the thorny question of whether Barack Obama is indeed eligible to be president of the United States.”

Full transcript:

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Mitt Romney refused to condemn Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and four other Republicans who have alleged that Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is part of a Muslim Brotherhood campaign to infiltrate the American government. During an event in Reno, Nevada Romney dodged a question about the allegations, saying simply, “I’m not going to tell other people what things to talk about. Those are not things that are part of my campaign.” A growing number of Republicans, including House Speaker John Beohner (R-OH) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) have condemned Bachmann. Watch Romney’s remarks:

This isn’t the first time the former Massachusetts candidate has failed to speak out against extremists in his own party. Romney refused to directly repudiate Donald Trump’s claims that President Obama was born in Kenya just hours before he is scheduled to appear with the reality T.V. star for a fund raiser in Las Vegas, NV. He also wouldn’t decry Rush Limbaugh for calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” or speak out against social conservatives who opposed his decision to hire an openly-gay national security spokesperson.

Romney’s foreign policy adviser John Bolton, however, has defended Bachmann’s call for the government to investigate the alleged Muslim Brotherhood plot.

During a speech today at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace marking the release of a report about religious freedom around the world, Secretary of State HIllary Clinton took a moment to deal with religious freedom a little closer to home. Specifically, she touched obliquely on accusations made about a top staffer in her office by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

In a letter to the State Department demanding an investigation into alleged Muslim Brotherhood infiltration, Bachmann suggested Clinton aide Huma Abedin is tied to Muslim Bortherhood and exercising influence on what Bachmann said were “actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”

In a thinly veiled reference, Clinton lauded those Republicans who stood up to Bachmann’s bogus and Islamophobic allegations:

Leaders have to be active in stepping in and sending messages about protecting the diversity within their countries. … We did see some of that in our own country. We saw Republicans stepping up and standing up against the kind of assaults that really have no place in our politics.

Watch the clip:

Among those Republicans were Sen. John McCain (AZ), Sen. Scott Brown (MA), Sen. Marco Rubio (FL), House Speaker John Boehner (OH) and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (WI). The Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Mike Rogers (MI) went from supporting Bachmann, who sits on his committee, to disavowing her witch-hunt. Sensenbrenner, in particular, called out Bachmann’s Islamophobic allegations as “wrong ” and an affront on religious liberty:

Religion is a personal issue to every one of the people who lives in the United States, whether you practice a faith, how you practice a faith, whether you don’t practice a faith, whether you say you’re a member of a faith but don’t practice it, it’s none of the government’s business. And this is the whole issue of religious freedom.

However, some Republicans have come out and supported Bachmann’s allegations. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) also defended Bachmann’s charges. An adviser to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, John Bolton, voiced support for Bachmann’s allegations on a radio show hosted by the progenitor of her conspiracy theories, notorious Islamophobe Frank Gaffney. Former presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, who also acts a as a surrogate for Romney, defended Bachmann, too, even writing a long Politico opinion piece today.

Despite criticism from leading Republicans over their attacks on a notable senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a group of House Republicans conducting a witch hunt on government officials supposedly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood are doubling down on their accusations.

The group, led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), has yet to provide actual evidence of the “infiltration” they say is occurring, and the attacks on Huma Abedin, a long-time and well-known Clinton aide, drew ridicule from across Washington and highlighted the shoddiness of the entire report. But the lawmakers aren’t giving up, The Hill reports:

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) told The Hill that the media’s focus on Abedin was a “deliberate effort to change the subject.”

“The focus in the media has been on one sentence in one of those letters, and … they have the right to do that,” Franks said. “But it certainly doesn’t serve the American people when they overlook the central focus of the letters to try to take out of context one element of it that seems to be the only thing the left can aim at.”

Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) all made similar points in refusing to apologize for their comments, and Bachmann went a step farther Thursday, launching a new attack on Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who has led the fight against the group of lawmakers’ ridiculous report.

While Republicans like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have dismissed Bachmann’s absurd attacks on Abedin and others as the witchhunt it is, others, like Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) have backed the group as being “concern[ed] about the security of the country.”

Tell Speaker Boehner to remove Bachmann from the House Intelligence Committee before her reckless politics damage our national security.

A day after making the case for tolerance of gays and Muslims, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA) defended his colleague Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) Islamophobic quest to root out supposed Muslim Brotherhood “deep penetration” of the U.S. government. Cantor lent credence to Bachmann’s claims by saying her accusations came from her “concern about the security of the country,” and then professed ignorance about her allegations.

CBS host Charlie Rose asked Cantor about his comments to BuzzFeed on Thursday that “It’s a bad thing to look at a Muslim and think bad things.” Cantor was explicit to BuzzFeed that he was not discussing Bachmann, but Rose asked him directly about her allegations:

ROSE: Do you think Congresswoman Bachmann was out of line? I mean, it does not square with this?

CANTOR: Well, again, I think that if you read some of the reports that have covered the story, I think that her concern was about the security of the country. So that’s about all I know.

Watch the video:

That Cantor would plead ignorance about Bachmann’s quest stretches credulity: the issue has become a national story with nightly news coverage over the past two weeks.

While some Tea Partiers, right-wing media figures like Glenn Beck and even one Romney adviser have supported Bachmann’s paranoid endeavor, other Republicans had no problem denouncing her witch-hunt. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and others did so last week to much media hoopla.

This isn’t Cantor’s first brush with Islamophobia — and, just like the last two days, he’s ended up on both sides of the story before. In 2011, Cantor endorsed fellow Virginia Republican David Ramadan, a practicing Muslim whose successful bid for a seat in the state House of Delegates was opposed by the Islamophobe Frank Gaffney, the progenitor of Bachmann’s charges. Earlier that year, though, Cantor co-hosted a Capitol HIll screening of a film by the Islamophobic Clarion Fund, where Gaffney sits on the board.

Tea Party Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) lashed out at Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for criticizing him and his fellow conservative members for suggesting that a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Gohmert is part of a small group of five Republican members, led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who are demanding an investigation into whether Clinton deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin is connected to the group.

“Normally you don’t go blast somebody on the floor who is a colleague on the same side of the aisle unless you touch base with them,” Gohmert complained during an appearance on the Dennis Miller Show on Tuesday, referring to McCain’s denunciation of the group’s allegations as “nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack.” The fiery Texan then launched into a personal attack against McCain, calling him “numb nuts” and suggesting the Muslim Brotherhood is now influencing him too:

GOHMERT: Well, it’s obvious that John McCain didn’t even read the letter because of what he said in accusing Michele and us of making these horrible accusations. There were five letters and there were many things that are stated that are facts in each letter. And I wish some of these numb nuts would go out and read the letter before they make these horrible allegations about the horrible accusations we’re making. But we also know that John McCain himself had said back in the early stages of stuff going on in Egypt that he was, in his words, “unalterably opposed to helping the Muslim Brotherhood.” Well, obviously the unalterable person has been altered, so he is okay with it now.

Listen:

Gohmert has long believed that Muslim extremist organizations have infiltrated the American government. At a recent Congressional hearing, he furiously questioned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about whether Mohamed Elibiary, a member of DHS’s Combatting Violent Extremism Working Group (CVE) and a Muslim is part of a terrorist organization.

While Bachmann and her small group of supporters are doubling down on their attacks, a growing number of Republicans are distancing themselves from the charges.

Newt Gingrich came to Michele Bachmann’s defense during an event at Politico Tuesday morning, insisting that she and the four Congresspeople who have been criticized by other Republicans for implying that a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, are raising legitimate concerns about the groups’ efforts to infiltrate the American government.

“There weren’t allegations, there was a question,” Gingrich insisted. “The question ought to be asked across the board, what’s the role of the Muslim Brotherhood, what are its various networks and to what degree does it now influence the United States?” Gingrich claimed that senior members of his own party — including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) — have bought into an “elite” culture of “political correctness” that prevents any discussion about radical Islam:

JIM VANDEHEI (POLITICO): So you think the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the American government?

GINGRICH: I think it’s worth knowing and I think it tells you something about the level of hysteria attacking these five members of Congress….I would ask the question, what is it they’re afraid of learning?

Watch it:

The former House Speaker lamented that most Republicans, including the party’s presidential nominee Mitt Romney, have resisted investigating the influence of radical Islam on the government and singled out former primary opponent Rick Santorum as a leader on the issue.