Santorum apologized, sort of, using a variation of the “I am sorry people misunderstood what I meant” apology that is so popular in Washington:
Sen. Rick Santorum says he “meant no offense” by referring to Adolf Hitler while defending the GOP’s right to ban judicial filibusters as Senate leaders prepared to start a countdown Friday to a vote over whether to stop minority senators from blocking President Bush’s judicial nominees.
“Referencing Hitler was meant to dramatize the principle of an argument, not to characterize my Democratic colleagues,” Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the GOP leadership in the Senate, said of his remarks Thursday.
I am sorry I’m stupid, in other words.
Rick
Yeah, he goofed. You wander into the Rob’t Byrd metaphorical muck, some’s going to stick.
Cordially…
ppgaz
There is nothing so endearing as watching denizens of the Internet bark about politicians playing the Hitler card.
Reality check, please. All politics is theater. All players have all the cards in the deck. Sooner or later, every card will get played. Let’s grow up and get over it.
Al
I’ve always found the “OMG I’m shocked that my opponent X compared Y to Z How dare he lower the level of debate to that level” line of argument to be noxious misdirection. If I use an analogy comparing, say, bloggers to schools of fish, no one (I think) takes it literally and says “OMG he thinks I’m like a fish”, but everyone gets bent out of shape when people use analogies involving the extremes in people – both positive and negative. How dare he compare me to Hitler? How dare he compare himself to Lincoln?
Yeah, when I use the analogy of bacteria developing drug resistance as something that supports the idea that humans evolved from lower animals, that could of course be twisted to say that I “think people are like staph infections”, but that’s crap. Saying A is to B as C is to D implies no direct relationship between A and C. 1 is to 10 as 1 billion is to 10 billion. That doesn’t mean that 1 is much like a billion. There’s a difference between a true A:B::C:D analogy and a direct comparison, and I find it very annoying that it is lost.
Yes, I know that comparisons are often used to leave mental associations between A and C, and this can be problematic, but I think there are way too many people getting way too bent out of shape about these stupid sorts of things too often, and it’s a facile, cable-news-shouting-head sort of a way to score cheap points.
This is not to defend Santorum himself; I despise him. But I will defend to the dea-… err.. I will defend to the point of some inconvenience, his right to make stupid analogies using ill-advised examples.
Al
This (the movie at the bottom where Santorum not just compares, but equates those who prefer separation of church and state with Fascists, Nazis, Baathists, Anarchists, pedophiles, the morbidly obese, and a dog turd) is complete crap, though. Every bit as reasonable as smearing tall, thin bearded men (like – dare I say it? – Abraham Lincoln) with the sins of one named Bin Laden.
TJ Jackson
Does it compare with the Reid’s statement that GOP nominees are like Darth Vader? When you want to see lies and and spin at its best one only need review the newspaper morgues to see what th donks were saying ten years ago about votes on judges. Any bets on how it compares with today’s donkey bluster?
wild bird
Sometimes they dont know when to keep their big liberal mouths shut and then they end up with the foot in it
Kimmitt
Does it compare with the Reid’s statement that GOP nominees are like Darth Vader?
Um, Darth Vader is a fictional character. This may help clue you in on the whole “humor” concept.
Al
Um, Darth Vader is a fictional character. This may help clue you in on the whole “humor” concept.
Liberals are always making excuses for history’s worst monsters. “Jimmy Carter just wanted peace!” “Bill Clinton just wanted some action!” “Darth Vader’s fictional!”
Give me a break. So what if he’s fictional? It doesn’t excuse the fact that he personally slaughtered dozens of children, special children of superior blood. Hitler would have protected the little superior children. Other than those ones that died from all the war and indiscriminate bombings and stuff that were forced on him. Anyway, quit trying to obscure the real issue here: Darth Vader was really bad, and Harry Reid compared GOP nominees to him. And by the rubber/glue rule, that means that Reid is really the one who’s as bad as Darth Vader.