Earlier today, Senator Ted "Calgary" Cruz (R-TX) on the United States Senate floor compared the defunding of Obamacare in Congress to appeasing Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. How absurd can this shameless demagogue and his pathetic enablers get?
"If you go to the 1940s... Nazi Germany. Look, we saw in Britain Neville Chamberlain who told the British people, 'Accept the Nazis. Yes, they'll dominate the continent of Europe, but that's not our problem. Let's appease them. Why? Because, it can't be done. We can't possibly stand against them.' And in America, there were voices that listened to them. I suspect those same pundits who say it can't be done if had been in the 1940s, we'd have been listening to that. Then, they would have made television and would have gotten beyond carrier pigeons and beyond letters and they would have been on tv and they would have been saying, 'You cannot defeat the Germans.'"
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Of the "voices that listened to them" that Cruz referred to was the 1930s anti-Semitic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin. If the senator will invoke historical comparisons about the Mother of All Racist Regimes, so will others.
Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball" said this of Senator Cruz a few weeks ago (video here)
Chris Matthews: Ted Cruz 'Fits In Tradition' With Nazi Sympathizer Father Coughlin
Amid a segment discussing the new generation of Republican voices in the U.S. Senate, MSNBC host Chris Matthews railed against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Matthews said that Cruz "fits in the tradition" of reviled historical figures like notorious Nazi sympathizer and radio host Father Coughlin and 1950s-era anti-communist Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI).
After playing a portion of clips of Cruz speaking to conservative audiences, Matthews noted that the junior senator from Texas has said even more inflammatory things off camera. "This guy goes pretty far, but I think he fits in the tradition of Father Coughlin, and [Joe] McCarthy, and of course, maybe to a lesser extent, Pat Buchanan, and [Bill] O’Reilly," Matthews said...
Father Coughlin broadcast an anti-Semitic pre-World War II radio program in which he regularly attacked President Franklin Roosevelt and sympathized with the causes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. During a speech in the Bronx in 1938, Coughlin shocked the nation by giving a Nazi salute and exclaiming, "When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing."
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Who was Father Coughlin? As I wrote in
this 2009 diary, few public figures did more damage than he did in poisoning political discourse in the years immediately preceding World War II.
The Grandfather Of Hate Radio
A lot has been said lately about the state of talk radio – the overwhelming presence of hate, lies, threats and hysteria. Everyone thinks its a phenomenon of the past twenty years. Sadly, no.
Hate radio has its roots back to the beginnings of radio. Although not the only one who used the airwaves to preach hate, fear and prejudice, Father Charles Coughlin was probably the most famous practitioner of extreme right wing sentiment. Crooks and Liars, Feb 20, 2009.
Long before anyone had ever heard of such noxious and intellectually vacuous demagogues as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, and Bill O'Reilly, another person ruled the airwaves in this "land of the free and home of the brave" with upwards of 40 million of listeners tuning in to his Sunday broadcasts. Peddling hate, spewing antisemitism, and demonizing minorities on a regular basis were the hallmarks of his angry radio sermons. Once described as a "combination of Huey Long and Joe McCarthy in clerical cassock, with a touch of Goebbels thrown in" and pretending to defend the common man's interests under the guise of populism, this man was as socially corrosive an influence in this country as anyone in the 20th century. Sounding themes not often heard as widely since the 1930's and railing against another president who came to office burdened with unprecedented economic problems, he branded the president's policies as the "doctrine of Lenin." Not unlike these present peddlers of hate, this "radio priest" was a divisive figure and one admired by his listeners and reviled by his detractors...
As their political fortunes have faded in recent years, the Republican rightwing has become a dangerous mixture of excessive paranoia, virulent nationalism, religious fanaticism, simplistic anti-intellectualism, and irrational bigotry. Some fair-minded observers might even refer to this explosive mixture as anti-Americanism.
The Week in Editorial Cartoons - Demagogues Amongst Us by JekyllnHyde, June 7, 2009.
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Many in the Democratic Party wanted a single payer system to control costs and reduce premiums. Obamacare is a compromise one step or two lower than the eventual goal and as everyone knows, there hasn't been any shortage of internal criticism. That said, political demagoguery might temporarily enhance the senator's own political fortunes amongst his know-nothing supporters. It doesn't add anything of substance to the debate.
Moreover, the careers of both Father Charles Coughlin and Senator Joe McCarthy ended in total disgrace.