Sorry, right-wingers, Whitehouse didn't call you all Aryan racists
December 21, 2009 4:29 pm ET by Matt Gertz
The right-wing media have spent the year BEGGING for progressive leaders to call them Nazis.
Back in April, media conservatives freaked out over declassified Department of Homeland Security report detailing potential increases in right-wing extremism. Ignoring the possibility that the election of a black president could have an actual effect on the radicalism and recruitment of actual hate groups - like, for instance, the Klan - the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the world were convinced that the report was actually aimed at them.
Then in August, Nancy Pelosi commented that protestors are "carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care." Sure enough, swastikas and other Nazi icons had appeared on signs carried by those protestors, who were suggesting that the Democrats' health care reform plans were reminiscent of Hitler's Germany. But the right-wing was sure that Pelosi was talking about them, and had been calling the protestors or opponents of health care reform "Nazis."
Now, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is getting the same treatment. In a floor speech yesterday, Whitehouse criticized Senate Republicans' rampant obstructionism of health care reform efforts, specifically their refusal to support cloture on a defense appropriations bill in hopes of slowing down attempts to move to a vote on health care. Whitehouse stated that Senate Republicans were "desperate to break this president," adding "They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist."
From Whitehouse's December 20 floor speech (about 115 minutes in):
The lowest of the low was the Republican vote against funding and supporting our troops in the field in a time of war. As a devise to stop health care, they tried to stop the appropriation of funds for our soldiers. There is no excuse for that. From that, there is no return. Every single Republican member was willing to vote against cloture for funding our troops, and they admitted it was a tactic to obstruct health care reform. The Secretary of Defense warned us all that a "no" vote would immediately create "a serious disruption in the worldwide activities of the Department of Defense," end quote, and yet every one of them was willing to vote "no."
Almost all of them did vote no. Some stayed away, but that's the same as "no" when you need 60 "yes" votes to proceed. Voting "no" and hiding from the vote are the same result. Those of us on the floor see it was clear. The three of them who did not cast their yes votes until all 60 Senate votes had been tallied and it was clear that the result was a foregone conclusion. And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our new young president.
They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one.
Rather then assess the validity of Whitehouse's claims - do such people exist, and do they support Republcian senators? - the right-wing started screaming about how Whitehouse was accusing them all of membership in hate groups.
Washington Times blogger Kerry Picket got the ball rolling, providing Whitehouse's full comment but doing so under the headline, "Sen. Whitehouse: foes of health care bill are birthers, right-wing militias, aryan groups." RedState's Erick Erickson took over from there, claiming that Whitehouse said that "If you oppose health care deform, you are a racist, hate-spouting, Aryan who roots for the assassination of Barack Obama" and "labeled everyone opposed to the legislation as racist hatemongers rooting for bullets against the President." The claim spread through the right-wing blogosphere from there, and just made the jump to Lou Dobbs' radio show.
What seems oddest about the right-wing media's obsessive claims that progressives are calling them Nazis is the implication that comparing your political opponents to Hitler and company is out of bounds. If the right really believes that such comparisons are beyond the pale, maybe its time for them to stop informing us how much Obama and his politics remind them of Hitler.
I LOVED his comments!! Spot-on ...
They've gotten so used to lying and distorting they can't stop now.
Hypocrisy as far as the eye can see!
Democrats almost never stand up against this kind of bullying -- instead, they favor the rollover, the apology, and the "we're looking ahead not backwards" press conference.
When a Democrat says ANYTHING outside the placid, vanilla, accepted vocabulary of the Hill, you can count on both Republicans AND Democrats assaulting the "miscreant." And the Democrat ultimately apologizing for speaking the truth.
Definitely not the words I would have chosen. I consider them selfish, misinformed drooling Troglodytes. But that's just me.
No parsing here, but listen to the lovely, loving senator from Rhode island. In his words, a day of reckoning is coming....
His despicable comments about opponents of obamacare in the senate start at the 1 hour 57th minute.
Speaking truth to/about progressive and looking forward to November 2010.
We will get out the vote and show up at the polls.
With acorn's able assistance in registration and black panther voter intimidation, I'm sure.
You wingnuts screech about voter fraud every election but there is NOT ONE SINGLE case that resulted in a prosecution or a fraudulent vote.
Sheesh! Get a clue, buddy.
You mighta jumped the shark into the sarcasm pool with that one. Are you really Colbert?
Please tell me, just how is that despicable? It looks to me as though he's predicting that things will go exactly as they are ideally meant to in American politics.
Again, thank you for the link. My respect for Whitehouse has greatly increased.
So the blog master erred in denying the statements by whitehorse were not about those that opposed the monstrosity of obamacare?
Try to learn to listen and read for comprehension. It helps.
I'll defer to your obvious supernatural skills of discernment to illuminate all of us...
A: Birthers, right-wing militias and Aryan group members.
He could have included idiots, but I guess that's implied.
Do you really have that much trouble understanding? At that point in the speech he wasn't even specifically referring to health care reform. He was talking about republican obstructionism and mentioned groups that joined them in attacking Obama. There is no honest way to look at those words and say that he was generally calling Obama's opponents birthers, fanatics, right-wing militias and Aryan groups. He was saying that those groups JOINED the republicans who were blocking Obama's efforts and trying to discredit him. It isn't deniable that they did. No one is even saying there was coordination, but they were working toward the same goal.
It doesn't take any supernatural skills. It only requires that one have the ability to read for comprehension. Keep working on it and you might eventually achieve that. But I doubt it.
For all the foaming at the mouth by these rabid right-wingers anytime even a vague reference of calling them what they are, they get even more rabid, whether it is directed at them or not.
Guilty as charged? Perhaps they hate the idea of being called what they know to be, especially by a Democrat?
So the way I see it:
If the shoe fits...
Flashback to Jimmy Carter's quote about the " overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity" toward Obama (which clearly includes at least three degrees of separation from " criticism of Obama"), when the wingnuts were completely fooled into thinking that Carter had said that anybody who disagreed with Obama on anything was a racist.
Lesson to Liberals : don't bother dumbing everything down for the far right, no matter how hard you try to make it safe for them to understand, they'll always go a little bit dumber.