Jamie Crawford, CNN Political Ticker, reported that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee likened abortions in America to the holocaust. His exact words were, “Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our workforce. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973.”
As I have written time and again, conservative right wing republicans cannot argue with logic so they bring on the barrage of verbal nastiness. Almost everyone agrees that the holocaust was a horrible thing so equating whatever it is that they don’t agree with with either Nazi’s or the holocaust itself is a surefire way to rile up their followers. The other word that they have managed to manipulate to conjure up images of death, torment, and horror is liberal. Notice that he doesn’t just say abortion it’s “liberalized” abortion.
These semantic games that they are playing have been highly tuned to strike just the right chord in their close minded base. It doesn’t matter that logically the holocaust and legalized abortion have nothing in common or that “liberal” means “favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.”
Huckabee also pulled out another verbal weapon from his arsenal “God”. In the same speech he stated “I’m very tired of hearing people who are unwilling to change the constitution, but seem more than willing to change the holy word of God as it relates to the definition of marriage.”
This statement is, to me, the embodiment of what is wrong with the Religious Right. He makes it clear that he believes political decisions should be guided by religious beliefs, effectively throwing the separation of church and state right out of the window. He said this while speaking to the crowd about the necessity of conservative lawmakers to pressure for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
To sum up Huckabee’s apparent platform: The Christian conservatives’ idea of God and his wishes will decide the laws and anyone who disagrees are liberalized nazi’s. Nice.
Sorry you had to do that.
I just hope that with oil climbing ever higher, strong evidence that our own inflation rate is 6-9% in reality, not just 2.x% as the shrub government would have us believe, and another war breaking out in the Middle East (Lebanon) we aren’t forced into a nasty depression. Oil could hit $5/gal and real inflation could hit over 10%. This is the time our country needs radically different leadership and well-reasoned but immediate action. I just hope Obama can provide this. In fact, I’m praying for it.
Thanks for the great post. I shared my recent thoughts on my shift toward Hillary last week on my blog. I still very much support Obama, but am leaning slightly toward Hillary now (note: slightly).
You say: “4 or 8 years in the White House will not be enough time to fix the damage caused by George Bush. So to achieve the long term comprehensive success the progressive movement needs to fix this nation we need to bring liberals, progressives, and moderates together.”
I could not agree more. This is the exact reason why I’ve been excited about Obama since Super Tuesday. I do think he has the ability to inspire a generation of new progressive citizens, while uniting the various factions of the current Democratic party (though that’s getting tougher the longer this primary draws out). Of course, Obama will have to deliver on his progressive promises, which will be no small feat. Especially given all the obstacles that gmknobl outlined in the previous comment.
The one thing I would love to see is the unification of the progressive/establishment factions. Because that too is a long term problem facing the Dem Party. It’s not a new problem, but it needs to be addressed if the party plans on winning anything beyond 2008. I hope Obama offers the VP nod to Clinton or one of her surrogates (e.g., Evan Bayh, Wesley Clark, etc.).
Anyway, again, thanks for your post. Big fan of the blog and I appreciate your perspective on things.
I would like to thank both of you for your comments. I don’t much time now but I wanted to make sure and thank you both.