Republicans and Nazis

The Republican Noise Machine's attacks on Senator Dick Durbin were such an obvious case of attacking the speaker to avoid discussion of the real issue that I hardly thought it was even necessary to take the time to defend Durbin. There have already been tremendous number of blogs which have posted defenses.

Raw Story has a unique defense as they report several cases in which Republicans have compared Democrats to Nazis, with the analogy being far weaker than the manner in which Durbin criticized to use of torture. For example, Senator Phil Gramm compared a Democratic tax plan to Nazi law in 2002.

"Now, forgive me, but that is right out of Nazi Germany,” Gramm said. “I don't understand ... why all of a sudden we are passing laws that sound as if they are right out of Nazi Germany."

Senator Rick Santorum compared Democrats with Adolf Hitler more recently during the fight over filibusters:

"Imagine, the rule that this is the way we confirm judges has been in place for 214 years, broken by the other side 2 years ago, and the audacity of some Members to stand up and say, How dare you break this rule, it is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying: I'm in Paris, how dare you invade me, how dare you bomb my city. It's mine," Santorum said May 19. "This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster."

The article includes multiple additional examples, with no reports of apologies received from the Republicans.