An easy way to "finesse" this would have been to release a statement that said something simple like...
Muslims of goodwill should acknowledge the wishes of the 9/11 families and relocate their proposed community center as a show of enlightened compromise.
...and leave out all the crap about "playin' politics" and "political footballs". He kept saying he should stay out of it, but he couldn't stop himself.
Kinda stupid.
The leaders of anti-Mosque hysteria remind me of my Nervous Nellie “sensitive” PC friends who are endlessly offended by everything including smokers, wavers of Confederate flags, people posing in pictures with guns, etc. A price of free speech and property rights is that you will sometime have your “feelings” hurt. The anti-Mosque crusaders need to man up and be more thick skinned.