It’s often noted that in the heat of passion partisans of both parties use comparisons to Nazi Germany, which usually instantly undermines someone’s own argument unless the comparison can stand up. But John Perr of Perrspectives notes that Republicans are now facing another danger: they seemingly continuously compare any policy or government action they don’t like to slavery. Here’s the beginning of his must-read-in-full post:
From time to time, Republican Party leaders are forced to remind their candidates that they are living in the 21st century. In early 2008, the GOP got diversity training in preparation for campaigning against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, including the guidance “you can’t allow the party to be Macaca-ed.” After the likes of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock shamed the GOP over “the gift from God” that is “legitimate rape,” House Republicans were instructed to “stop talking about rape” in a meeting room named after a prominent Virginia slaveholding family.
But now that Nevada rancher, deadbeat, domestic terrorist and right-wing hero Cliven Bundy has voiced his conviction that African-Americans would be better off as slaves, the Republican Party that embraced his cause needs another remedial lesson in American history and basic humanity. The short version of the memo:
Stop comparing the debt, Obamacare, gun control, abortion, the safety–and just about everything else you oppose–to slavery. It won’t end well for you.
Now, that will be a difficult task for a Party of Lincoln with a fondness for the Confederacy and prone to calling the first African-American President of the United States “the race-baiter in chief.” But the GOP has got to start somewhere, or risk the obvious conclusion: if the white hood fits, wear it.
Take, for example, Sarah Palin’s jeremiad about the national debt last fall.
With federal budget deficits plummeting and the U.S. national debt stable as a percentage of the American economy stable over the rest of the decade, Palin chose an odd moment to do her Frederick Douglas impersonation:
“Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China. When that money comes due – and this isn’t racist, but it’ll be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to beholden to the foreign master.”
According to Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert, that debt burden would rank among the three most immoral things ever perpetrated against the American people by their government
There’s a LOT more so go to the link and read it in its entirety.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.