Republican candidate says that while he is ‘horrified’ by the Muslim community center proposal, ‘the first amendment is about the right to be despicable’

Rand Paul, the Republican presidential candidate, invoked the Ku Klux Klan on Tuesday to explain why he opposed the construction of a Muslim community center – pejoratively known as the “Ground Zero mosque” – near the site of the September 11 attacks in lower Manhattan.

During an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Republican senator from Kentucky said he had been “horrified” at the Muslim community center proposal but that he opposed any law that would prevent it.

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“When they told me that they were going to build a mosque at 9/11 [sic], I was horrified and thought that was a terrible thing,” Paul said. “But I’m not for a law to prevent them. If you want to march down the street and you’re a part of the KKK, I’m horrified by that, and object to it. But there are certain – the first amendment is about the right to be despicable.”

A plan to erect a 13-story Muslim community center, which would have included a space for prayer, at a site north of the World Trade Center that already hosted prayers became mired in political controversy in 2010. Prominent Republicans from Newt Gingrich to John McCain to Sarah Palin condemned the development plan.

“Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland?” Palin tweeted. “Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.”

On Tuesday, Daily Show host Stewart jumped on Paul’s seeming conflation of Muslims seeking a community center with Klan members or other “despicable” elements.

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“You can’t equate a mosque with the KKK,” Stewart said.

“No, what I’m saying is that you can personally object to things that the law will allow,” Paul said. “And it doesn’t mean that we all have to say that we all accept everyone else’s beliefs on everything else. So for example, I’m absolutely for the law not preventing a mosque to be built. However, at the same time I think it’s a really, really, really bad idea to build a mosque at the 9/11 site.”

“You do know, though,” said Stewart, “that there was [already] a mosque there.”

“I know, I know,” Paul said.

The controversy over the Muslim community center in lower Manhattan drove a wedge in 2010 between Paul and his father, the former presidential candidate Ron Paul, who called opposition to the center an example of “grandiose demagoguery”.

“The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the first amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque,” Ron Paul said at the time.

Rand Paul disagreed, saying that money toward the development should be donated to charity instead. “I think reconciliation is best promoted by – instead of having a multimillion dollar mosque – maybe having a multimillion dollar donation to the memorial site, would be better for all,” Rand Paul said.

Plans for a Muslim community center at the site remain in place, albeit in a scaled-down, three-story version by marquee architect Jean Nouvel.