Santorum: 'It's 1930's Germany All Over Again'!

I thought it was a joke at first, but, sadly, it is not.

Monday evening, Rick Santorum warned that the 2006 elections were the "equivalent of the late 1930s" in Germany:

Santorum issues GOP call to arms
By BRAD RHEN
Staff Writer
Lebanon Daily News
MYERSTOWN — Likening the times to the late 1930s as Nazi Germany was rising to power, Sen. Rick Santorum said last night that if he loses his re-election bid, it could set the stage for terrorism to become more of a threat than the Nazis ever were.

“If we are not successful here and things don’t go right in the election, there’s a good chance that the course of our country could change,” he said. “We are in the equivalent of the late 1930s . . . ."

Speaking before the Lebanon County republicans, Santorum warned that electing Democrats would be the equivalent of appeasing Hitler. Telling voters that a vote for your opponent is a vote for the terrorists is not only a sign of desperation, it is a sick, demented and cynical ploy.

Rick Santorum should actually read the history to which he so frequently refers. He should read it and reflect on the lessons of Hitler's rise to power in Germany.

Germany's president appointed Hitler Chancellor in January, 1933, the result of political maneuvering in an attempt to hold together a minority coalition government. New elections were set for March.

In a "February surprise", a few weeks before the elections, the German Parliament was set afire. A foreigner, and a communist, was accused of the arson.

That was all Hitler needed. The Nazis quickly pushed through anti-immigration bills and, claiming necessity resulting from foreign threats, the suspense of habeas corpus.

Hitler and the Nazi party then set the government resources to work promoting the Nazi cause in the March elections -- the military was used to underscore the supposed outside threats to Germans, anti-immigration hysteria was inflamed, and the Government rolled out propaganda effectively promoting a Nazi vote as the only rational alternative for the loyal, nationalistic German.

So it was. Hitler came to power after parlaying a supposed foreign enemy into an excuse to ramp up anti-immigration fears, suspend basic civil rights, and scare out the vote with false government propaganda. Hitler and the Nazi Party succeeded in convincing German voters that their future, the safety of their children, and their economic security, all depended on voting Nazi in the March 1933 elections. German voters were told, and believed, that any other vote was a vote for appeasement of the foreign evil-doers with designs on the well-being of Germany.

And now Rick Santorum wants to stand before us and tell us that a vote for Bob Casey is the equivalent of appeasing Hitler? He wants me to vote for him because any other vote increases the threat of terrorism? He wants America to send the Republicans back to power because the only alternative is the appeasing, terrorist-loving Democrats?

Rick Santorum is insane and dangerous.

Senator, in my America, dissent is not the equivalent of anything but liberty. When I reject your policies, when I demand that you explain yourself, when I want you to account for the disaster you have wrought on my country, on innocents abroad, for the trashing of our good name around the world, I am not appeasing anyone other than our founders who insisted that vigilance was the only effective protector of liberty. For you to suggest otherwise, to imply to the contrary, to threaten us with disaster if we do not agree with you, if we do not want you to raise your voice as our representative any longer, is not merely insane and dangerous -- it is treachery. You demean me when you stoop to such low tactics, you piss on the liberty for which so many have willingly shed their blood, and you expose yourself as a sniveling, immoral coward.

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.


(Thanks to Strike the Root for the image.)