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October 13, 2009

When They Do It, It's A Virtue; When We Do It, It's A Sin

Today in It's Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than Permission: The Republican Party, protestations to the contrary, is the inventor of the double-standard in American politics, and they use it with the ease and Zen-like shamlessness.

Our example today comes via Washington Monthly's Political Animal. And, perforce, the observation that, during the Weimar years, it was popular for Germany's insurgent political parties to form adjunct squads of what amounted to rabble rousers to go to competitors' political rallies with the express purpose of creating chaos. One of those insurgents, of course, were the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (work it out, Skippy). Now, if you were to compare this to manifest behavior such as, oh, I'd say SerfdomWorks and Americans for Reduced Prosperity and allied organizations organizing detachments of the Dick Armey to cause havoc at town halls, you'd hear Godwin's Law (somewhat-incorrectly) invoked so fast your head would be spinning.

However, when three minutes of a much-abused clip from a 2004 biography of die Reichskanzler is paired with a voice-over of the little Oesterreichisch corporal approving of Nancy Pelosi, well, shoot, they're just joshing, don't ya know?

The National Republican Congressional Committee happily linked and promoted the video, calling it "funny" (which is another sign of how LTTP these mooks are, since that clip has been pretty much abused to death) and recommending that people view it … until the National Democratic Campaign Committee called them on it, and then all they got back was a tepid apology.

Later that day, in various quarters, Republicans and conservatives criticized the typical liberal response of complaining about being compared to Nazis because … well, because they were being compared to Nazis.

And so it goes.

Posted by The Chinuk at October 13, 2009 01:11 PM