Day By Day

Monday, May 23, 2005

Pennsylvania Politics -- Santorum Steps in It

Rick Santorum lost his cool on the Senate floor during the debate over filibusters and may possibly have compared his opponents to Hitler [although his statement is so incoherent that it's hard to tell to whom he was referring]. Here's a link to The Raw Story which runs a transcript of the relevant remarks. [here]

Santorum quickly apologized for the remarks saying "Referencing Hitler was meant to dramatize the principle of an argument, not to characterize my Democratic colleagues." [here] That's how I thought he meant it, but his remarks were so garbled that they could be read a number of ways.

Whatever, he's given the Democrats some ammunition they can use against him next year, and whenever anyone criticizes them for over the top remarks they can simply point to his Hitler remarks.

Jonah Goldberg over at NRO has suggested a rule of debate: Whenever anyone compares someone or something to Hitler in a debate, he loses right then and there [or something to that effect]. It's a good idea.

UPDATE:

Jonathan Chait, writing in the LA Times, argues that we really need more Hitler analogies:

Read it here.



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