Tweet
Dave Weigel at the Washington Independent reports that Congressman Steve Israel (D-NY02) has demanded an apology from his colleague, Michele Bachmann (R-MN06), for the Holocaust imagery used at her Tea-Party rally on Capitol Hill at which every member of the House GOP leadership spoke.
“I just cannot believe that Congresswoman Bachmann sponsored and brought to the American people, the use of images from the Holocaust, actual photographs of skeletal remains of people from the cremetoria, in order to make a point about the health insurance bill,” says Israel. “I can’t believe that Congresswoman Bachmann would stand where she stood and see those images and not have the common decency to say, ‘I disagree with the use of those images.’”
All members of the House GOP leadership who spoke at Bachmann’s Tea-Party rally yesterday were looking directly at the Buchenwald imagery from the podium. None of them disagreed with the use of the images or condemned them. None has yet.
11 Comments
Glenn Thrush at Politico this morning had a response from Boehner’s “spokesman’
This is, I’m afraid, a lie. The signs with imagery of the dead were five foot by eight foot banners, held twenty feet from the podium pointed directly at the speakers.
Per Milbank:
The fact that republicans behaved as they did will only decrease their numbers.
They seem to be doing everything they can to alienate reasonable patriotic Americans, don’t they?
Not to make a moral equivelence, but didn’t Grayson also use the word holocaust?
Hey! The bitch spoke and thousands followed Her request, She is queen shit, and thinks She is a great leader.
When leader boner, and her hord of retards in the Repubs went along with what She did, She was maximised.
She’ll never apologise, for doing what She thought was right.
It is so not morally equivalent. The word, “holocaust” is in the dictionary, and it refers to more than just, “The Holocaust,” which has a specific meaning. People refer to a “nuclear holocaust,” and it’s perfectly appropriate.
I think Grayson went a little far, in using the word “holocaust,” but that’s just because I don’t think it really fit the dictionary meaning. I certainly don’t think he did something offensive. He was just trying to refer to the enormity of allowing people to die because of our non-working health insurance system.
The sign at the rally, on the other hand, was very clear. There’s no possibility of mistaking what they were referring to.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? Michele Bachmann (R-MN06) doesn’t think at all. Not that a member of Congress should need to think very hard to know that those banners proclaiming “National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945” and using images from the Holocaust make a point about the health insurance bill were totally inappropriate.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Leader Boehner’s spokesperson had said that Boehner got confused, quoting the Declaration of Independence when he mistakenly believed that he was quoting the U.S. Constitution, because he was trying so hard to block the banners out of his consciousness. At least such an assertion would have been consistently stupid, much like the rest of that stupid event.
Leader Boehner has the most amazing ability not to see a lot of things, btw, especially when they are inconvenient to his painfully moronic worldview…
This wouldn’t be the same Leader Boehner who said that “he has not had a single American who was not a Member of Congress or the Administration come up to him and tell him they are in favor of the Public Option,” would it? Sure is the very same Leader Boehner.
All these “leaders” are doing is further marginalizing their party. The only real problem is that the Democrats, in this pathetic attempt at bi-partisanship, are marginalizing our party at the same time.
Sooo… what is happening is that ALL of them in Washington are marginalizing politics as usual. Time for a new party!
I was thoroughly disgusted and appalled by that sign, and that tools like Boner could claim with a straight face that he “didn’t know” about it is no surprise. If Boner’s lips are moving and sound is coming out of his mouth, it’s a LIE.
I would love to believe that crapulous behavior like this is “marginalizing” the Republicans more, or “marginalizing” this nascent purist “real conservative” group more. Sadly, I’m skeptical though.
These people push the Overton window, which is the point of why the Koch family is paying to astroturf rallies like this. Notice just how many of these congressfarts, including Eric Cantor, were willing to put themselves front & center in the group photo and proudly smarm themselves in front of the camera, while that Dachau photo was being held proudly aloft right behind them.
They are doing it bc they believe it will work, and sadly, to at least a certain degree, I belive it will… mainly bc our corporate overlords are paying for it and will continue to pay for whatever works to ensure that they can continue to greedily rip us all off as much as possible.
Just my 2 cents worth. I abhor what they did, although I don’t think we’ve come even close to witnessing the depths of degradation to which these tools are willing to sink. I don’t “get” why there isn’t more outrage over these digusting pranks, but witness that there is little outrage over it, except on leftie blogs. Did you read anything about it in your morning paper? Nope, didn’t think so. NPR just fawned over the teabaggers and made nary a comment about the Dachau sign.
I think it will continue, and I think it will get worse, and I don’t think they will be marginalized by it on little bit. In this case, I fervently hope that I’m dead wrong.