Comparing ObamaCare to the Holocaust isn’t racist in any straightforward way, but it’s hard to see how a politician could fail to understand how the comparison is offensive to both blacks and Jews. It’s offensive to Jews primarily because it diminishes the extent of their suffering. It’s offensive to blacks because it’s just one more example where a black president is shown a staggering degree of disrespect. He gets access to health care to millions of people for the first time, including many people living in black communities, and he gets compared to Hitler for his troubles.
This offense-giving is probably totally unintentional. Except in the limited sense that conservatives enjoy saying things that (they think will) annoy liberals, this clown’s comment was probably not intended to give offense. It was just intended to get attention and prove his “conservative” and “anti-ObamaCare” credentials.
But, as one Republican after another makes these kind of inane and insensitive remarks, there is a cumulative effect. They wind up just pushing everyone way from them.
You made the point in the run-up to the last election that 2012 was unlike other elections where a president was running into the headwind of a bad economy in that Republicans had managed to alienate and infuriate pretty much everyone not in their coalition. That was a great insight, albeit the kind I’ve come to expect from you. The election results bore this out. Limbaugh said that if Republicans couldn’t win in such an environment, they were in real trouble. I think it also has a lot to do with what was driving the pole skewers. People in their camp couldn’t believe they were losing.
Stuff like this is just more of the same. Thus, much of the conventional wisdom doesn’t apply as well as it once did. I do think we’re in trouble for the midterms. But I’m hopeful too that we may have some strengths to build on that there might be hope for a decent outcome. Either way, we’re in solid shape for 2016. I don’t think Hillary’s current pole numbers will hold up because the right wing Wurlitzer hasn’t gone to work on her just yet. There are many low information voters who can be scared off. But her numbers are so overwhelmingly strong that I cannot see how any Republican who can actually emerge from the process, with the positions he’ll have to take, can survive.
If the Republicans are smart they’ll go back to real conventions with unpledged delegates. But I don’t that will happen this time around. Maybe after Cruz is destroyed by Hillary they’ll give it a try in 2020. Of course by then the country will be even more brown. Arizona will be purple trending blue. Texas will be only a bit out of reach.
I know this will never happen, but what some principled journalist needs to do is to get this Senator on camera, show him several minutes of graphic footage from the the concentration camps; complete with summary executions, piles of rotting corpses being bulldozed into pits, and lines of women and children being led to the gas chambers under the auspices of taking a shower. And when the clip is over, this journalist needs to lean forward in his chair, stare straight into the eyes of this pile of human shit, and while the camera is zoomed in to his face, ask him, “Explain to me, Senator, specifically what part of what you just watched is “just like Obamacare””?
And don’t let that fucker vacillate with his answer. Force him to answer the question. Make him own his statement.
There’s the flaw.
Heh, maybe they could sneak in some hippie blogger to do the dirty work.
The really sad part is, a Sunday show like that would actually get better ratings that the rest of them combined.
Yes it is sad but true. It would seem that the average GOP member of Congress, is more impressed with trying to out shock and awe the other guy. Then communicating anything that provides any form of relevant information to his constituents. They just seem to enjoy talking to hear themselves talk. Just saying…
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Here you go, Senator. You keep right on digging, there.
Outright lies at 1:10 PM. Talk about a slippery slope.
As opposed to the Republican plan which is that everyone rich should live and everyone poor should die.
It’s also not hard to see how a politician could, after cold-blooded calculation, decide that being offensive to both blacks and Jews is not going to be that big a deal in Tennessee.
“This offense-giving is probably totally unintentional.”
Good Lord, BooMan, a primary intent of statements like these IS to offend. Parsing the difference between intent to annoy and intent to offend is an inappropriate response to statements like these. You WILL offend a lot of people when you make these Holocaust/slavery/genocide/totalitarian/fascist/etc. references. They’re losing on the ACA- he’s angry- he intends to offend.
Even his own Caucus leader knows that this was rankly offensive. Since the modern conservative movement exists to offend those outside of their club, they’ll probably respond by running a primary opponent against the Caucus leader. It’s what they do these days.
Way to grow the tent, GOP!!!
“Totally unintentional”? Good grief, Boo — you need to look at what Steve M. has dug up about this cretin:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2014/05/stacey-campfield-congenital-troll.html#links
I stand by my assessment. He’s an attention-seeker and wants to be perceived as “the most conservative.”
He isn’t doing it because he wants to offend people, primarily, but because he wants people to talk about him.
Gonna agree on the attention-seeking but disagree on the intent to offend: He’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping. Guys like him just LOVE to piss off the liberals; they revel in the pain they cause. I’ve seen it firsthand, and I know.
The first word that came to my mind was FOOL. But your word CLOWN is much better. Let the record show for all the bots and spiders Sen. Stacey Campfield is a CLOWN.
“This offense-giving is probably totally unintentional”
BWAAAAAAHHHAHAHAHAHA!!!
more seriously: that’s precisely the permissive environment, that permits these things to happen over and over and over and over and over and….
Christ, I would have thought this analogy had already been made a dozen times over by some “conservative” or other. I can’t keep track of the Hitler/Fascist/Holocaust visions thrown out every day by our own rightwing authoritarian militarist nationalist movement….
What’s most interesting is that some Repub leaders in TN are openly denouncing an anti-Obama, Obamacare-hatin’ line. WTF? Has this happened before? Is there indeed some Obamacare Hate line that can now be crossed? How woulda thunk it?
I do wonder how many of these history-lovin’ rightwing worthies have read a single book about Hitler, the Germany of the 1930s or the Holocaust. Knowledge isn’t their strong suit, haha. But keep up the faith, Senator Tennessee Turd! Providing low income subsidies for health insurance and regulating insurance company abuses is JUST LIKE THE HOLOCAUST, yessir! The Tennessee waitin’ rooms must be piled high with corpses! (Also, too, another Repub demonstration of “civility”…)
Jeebus, at least when the left declared Bush/Cheney et. al. to be Nurembergian war criminals, they had engaged us in an actual war…
“What’s most interesting is that some Repub leaders in TN are openly denouncing an anti-Obama, Obamacare-hatin’ line. WTF? Has this happened before? Is there indeed some Obamacare Hate line that can now be crossed? How woulda thunk it?”
It’s only that the least dim among them are slowly having that moment right after Wile E. has run off the cliff, and REALIZES that he’s run off the cliff, but just before he actually starts falling.