Newt Gingrich, President Obama and the latest on the Nazi allusion front
I’m beginning to think all the major Jewish “defense agencies” like the ADL and both AJCs need full-time departments just to respond to shameless politicians using inappropriate Holocaust and Nazi analogies.
The latest: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, although he’s purportedly an historian, doesn’t have the historical sense to distinguish between policies he doesn’t like and the vilest, most dangerous political system in history.
In his new book, Gingrich argues that Obama administration policies are as “great a threat to America as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.”
Nice work, Newt; you’ve done wonders to buttress your reputation as a serious analyst of the American political scene.
The American Jewish Committee was first off the block in protesting Gingrich’s comments, but you have to think they’re spitting into the wind; in this age of talk-show and conspiracy hyperbole, politicians just can’t seem to resist this crud.
“By invoking the current Administration in the same breath as two murderous totalitarian states, Newt Gingrich has drawn a foolish and dangerous analogy,” said David Harris, the AJC executive director. “Gingrich’s linkage not only diminishes the horror of the Holocaust, it also licenses the use of extremist language in contemporary America.”
Harris goes on to point out that Gingrich, in book-tour interviews, has also argued that the Obama administration is a “secular socialist machine.” Apparently in his historical studies the ex-speaker missed the chapter describing the Nazis as bitter enemies of the socialists and communists, despite the “national socialism” in the party’s name.
“It is vital that the Republican leadership say clearly that such analogies are unacceptable,” Harris went on.
Don’t hold your breath, David; politicians in both parties just can’t seem to help themselves when it comes to these words of mass destruction.
Politico has a nice item about how Gingrich tried to clarify his comments without actually repudiating their content.