Cribbing from Wonkette this morning:
You may have heard the rumblings from the right about Senator Robert Byrd's not-that-helpful historical analogy vis-a-vis the Senate Republicans' threat to disallow filibusters and, uhm, Hitler. Byrd, who is old and scary, said that "Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."
She goes on to list a great many right wingers (including Iowa's own Steve King) who've used the Nazi Analogy. This seems to be affirmation of Godwin's Law:
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. Once such a comparison is made, the thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress."
Joe Scarborough is one of my regular viewings - it's important to keep up on what the right wingers are up to. Last night he tag-teamed with the dreaded Ann Coulter to bash on Byrd for the first third of the hour, and his name was never mentioned without the preface "former Klansman."
Now Byrd long ago renounced his segregationist views of 40 years ago. And he's done many great and good things over his 46 years (!) in the Senate. His principled opposition during the lead up to this war was truly statesmanlike.
But the right gets a lot of mileage out of that long ago brief Klan membership, and a few other anachronistic verbal gaffes. Might it be better for the Democratic Party as a whole if Byrd steps aside next year at the end of this term?
Politics
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