Bachmann Rally Compares Health Reform to Holocaust
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The radical fringe of the Republican party today gathered to hear Michelle Bachmann call for open rebellion against the government. Signs were held up in front of the US Capitol showing a Nazi mass grave and calling it “healthcare”. Other signs showed the president as an evil villain and calling for “hunting season” against moderate Republicans. The rally, which Rep. Bachmann called a “press conference”, is now being called the most visible admission the party is being taken over by a message of hate.
The extremist fringe now apparently has the support of the minority leader. When Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) held up what he called the US Constitution, the reponse fromthe crowd was to boo, and he then proceeded to quote from the Preamble to the Declaration of Indepedence. His lack of attention to detail remains the only possible explanation for his insistence that his party is not actively promoting hate. He claimed none of the placards were “offensive”, implying he condones the use of the Holocaust to lie about healthcare and promote the “hunting” of moderates. Boehner himself has previously suggested “rebellion” was an appropriate way to oppose healthcare reform.
The rally has now been called “an orgy of racism, anti-semitism, bigotry and hate”. Boehner’s refusal to denounce the open racism, violent threats and radical manifestaions of hate us a low point in the Republican party’s long-running flirtation with the radical hate-based fringe, and is another case of Boehner’s apparent willingness to condone the language of incitement to violence —he previously urged supporters who had begun carrying loaded firearms at political events to rebel against the government— to promote a smear campaign against the president.
Markos Moulitzas observed today that “Any party that would use pictures of dead Jewish children [in Nazi concentration camps] and compare it to affordable health care has lost its moral and ethical bearings”. Not one major national figure has com forward to denounce Rep. Bachmann for staging yesterday’s hate parade or Rep. Boehner for endorsing its radical message.
Attempts to defend or explain the increasing radicalization of the party have amounted to denial and obfuscation, making claims about moral equivalency or suggesting that such extreme, threatening and even seditious language is acceptable if use against a fictional “socialist” threat. Meanwhile, Mr. Boehner has released a faux health reform plan, which would leave 52 million Americans uninsured —or roughly 17%—, whereas the Demicratic plan would cover all but 4%. Boehner’s health bill would also reduce the federal by only $60 billion, compared to the Democrats’ more effective reduction of over $100 billion.
The Boehner plan would also legitimize the right of insurers to discriminate against patients on the grounds of “pre-existing conditions”, which in some cases could include having had a C-section or having been raped. The hapless nature of Republican positions on health insurance reform might be part of what is driving their now apparently coordinated effort to spread fear and lies and propagate an atmosphere of hate against Pres. Obama.
UPDATE, 9 November 2009, 22:38 EST: It has come to our attention that Elie Wiesel, the cultural icon, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, found in the shameful use of imagery of Holocaust victims to smear Democratic healthcare reform proposals a latent threat of right-wing extremist anti-Semitism. His foundation posted the following on Twitter on Friday:
Elie Wiesel on the GOP Tea Party’s anti-Semitism and Holocaust comparisons: “This kind of political hatred is indecent and disgusting”
There has been no formal apology from Rep. Bachmann, Rep. Boehner, or any leader of the Republican party who was in attendance. Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) decried the use of the images of Holocaust victims as a rhetorical tool at Bachmann’s rally, and demanded an apology:
I can’t believe that Congresswoman Bachmann would stand where she stood, and see those images, and not have the common decency to say, ‘I disagree with the use of those images.’ I think that she owes the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust an apology. She owes us all an apology. And I’m waiting. We’re all waiting.
The vitriol and propaganda on display at Bachmann’s rally, the reckless use of hate-filled rhetoric and smears, by the least thoughtful, least productive, least conscientious elements on the fringe right of the Republican party, is evidence of the same callous indifference to human suffering that allows them to condone the use of Holocaust imagery to smear Obama, the same callous indifference to human suffering that motivates them to gloss over the senseless deaths of 45,000 innocent people every year in the US, attributable to a flawed and corrupt system of insurance.
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While we all certainly know of people who eat up the radical Boehner sort of non-sentient drivel and espouse it themselves, the real problem with divisive posturing is that it does not have a well-defined cut-off.
If we alienate and divorce ourselves from less polarized members of our party (of whatever persuasion), we are then establishing ourselves as the core constituency. In so doing we set a dangerous precedent for the next ‘purist’ diatribe which will serve to further granulate the whole. As this process snowballs towards its inevitable end, we are left with an absurd Highlander-like outcome which asserts “There can be only one”.
Any party which does not embrace its disparate parts as a useful continuum is eventually doomed. What price is a “pure” philosophy? The answer is simple – oblivion.
[...] vain except in the case of Larry Kissell– of intimidating members of Congress. They marched around and teapartied with horrific pictures from Dachau and equating saving Americans’ lives with health care [...]