Limbaugh: No Retraction on Nazi Comment

The American voter dislikes and punishes intemperate talk. When Rush Limbaugh calls President Obama a Nazi, that does not hurt Obama. It hurts every Republican who by remaining silent, seems to assent.

On "Meet the Press" this weekend, David Brooks used the word "insane" to characterize Rush Limbaugh's analogy of Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. Byron York of the Washington Examiner contacted Limbaugh and received this comment:

Everyone seems to ignore that Pelosi started this, saying town hall participants were showing up with swastikas, etc. That's calling them Nazis, as Dick Durbin referred to our Gitmo interrogators from the Senate floor. I've been listening to the left compare George W. Bush to Hitler for eight years. I've been listening to Democrats and the left compare conservatism to Nazis my whole career. This time I responded.  In kind, by comparing the radical left policies of the Nazis to today's radical left leadership of the Democrat Party.  I'm not surprised they don't like it.

Yes but Durbin tearfully apologized on the Senate floor for his foul remark. When Moveon.org briefly hosted a member-produced ad equating Bush and Hitler, that group too hastily disavowed and retracted the ad. Those are the only two examples I recall from the Bush years of any prominent Democrat or left-of-center group using this kind of language. I would hope that sincere regret motivated Durbin and Moveon. I suspect though that they were also aware that they had done themselves extreme political damage with these reckless comments. The American voter dislikes and punishes intemperate talk - one reason that, for example, Howard Dean never made it to the presidency. When Rush Limbaugh talks in this way, it's not just Democrats who do not like it. It is everybody who cares about truth. Everybody who respects the conventions of American democracy, which takes for granted the basic good faith of people on the other side of the political divide. Oh - and also - everybody who does any real honor to the memories of the Nazis' victims. Rush does not care about any of that of course. He's the center of attention, which is how he likes it. President Obama likes it too. The crazier Republicans look, the more reasonable Obama looks by comparison. When Rush calls Obama a Nazi, that does not hurt Obama. It hurts every Republican who by remaining silent, seems to assent.