Democratic boss Terry McAuliffe apparently thought GOP honcho Ed Gillespie was overreacting to an ad submission that directly and uncreatively compared our President to Adolf Hitler.
So, yesterday, in response to my NRO piece regarding the Democratic judicial memos showing that Democrats take their marching orders from radical leftist groups, McAuliffe fired off a press release calling the piece “vile hate speech.”
My piece, McAuliffe asserts “compar[es] Senate Democrats to Nazis.” The article certainly made no mention of Nazis, Hitler, concentration camps or invasions of Poland. It did compare GOP Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch to Neville Chamberlain, which, in McAuliffe’s mind means I must have been calling Ted Kennedy a Nazi.
Let’s extend this line of reasoning.
On the day after McAuliffe led his party to the loss of the Senate and losses in the House in 2002, lame-duck Democratic Rep. Ken Bentsen told the Washington Post, “The Democrats tried the Neville Chamberlain approach and it was a disaster.”
Vile!
In May of 2001, National Environmental Trust President Phil Clapp called the left’s response to Bush’s environmental plan “the political equivalent of D-Day.”
Calling Bush Hitler!
That’s, of course, what we call an “analogy.” But in case it’s not fully clear, I also wasn’t asserting that Pat Leahy eats bratwurst or that Hatch had actually signed over Czechoslovakia to Ted Kennedy’s control.
But I have some questions for Terry McAuliffe.
Was Texas state legislator Garnet Coleman (a “Texas Patriot” according to Washington Democrats) comparing Tom DeLay and Texas GOP Chairman Susan Weddington to the KKK when he told a reporter:
If anyone believes that Tom DeLay and Susan Weddington are really interested in what’s good for black and brown people, then they believe that the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan is interested in what’s good for black and brown people.
Along those same lines–and returning to those memos (you know, the ones that call Miguel Estrada “especially dangerous, because . . . he is Latino,”)–was Dick Durbin’s staffer comparing most of Bush’s nominees to Nazis when he wrote “most of Bush’s nominees are nazis”?
Come to think of it, Terry McAuliffe is reminiscent of one powerful German figure from last century: Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the German general staff during World War I.
Von Flakenhayn in 1916 came up with the strategy of attacking the enemy at their strongest point (Verdun, in this case). In a protracted ten-month battle, the Germans whittled away their chances to win the war, making von Falkenhayn perhaps the worst failure in the history of military command.
(Dear Ed Gillespie: Please don’t attack me for comparing your party to the French.)
McAuliffe in 2000 played a role in losing the presidency in a time of peace and prosperity. As DNC chairman in 2002 he defied history, losing the Senate and bleeding seats in the House during a midterm election. He’s also handed five southern governorships to the GOP. Now he is trying to beat the Republicans in 2004 running on fiscal discipline and national security.
Keep it up, Terry.
–Timothy P. Carney is a reporter for the Evans-Novak Political Report.