The Political Cost of Extremist Talk

South Carolina senator Jim DeMint misspoke himself Wednesday night, comparing the contemporary United States to Germany “before World War II.” His remark exposes the real harm conservatives do to themselves by indulging in extremist talk.

South Carolina senator Jim DeMint misspoke himself Wednesday night, comparing the contemporary United States to Germany “before World War II.” In the senator’s defense, it might be noted that he did not specify exactly when before the Second World War he had in mind. Here's the statement as quoted by Dave Weigel in the Washington Independent. Weigel attended an event at the National Press Club to promote DeMint’s book, Saving Freedom. The key passage began by citing the experience of an Iranian immigrant who had complained to DeMint about the surge of government spending under President Obama. DeMint praised immigrants like her because:

They understand socialism. They understand tyrants. But none of us have ever had it here. We don’t even know what it looks like. Part of what we’re trying to do in “Saving Freedom” is just show that where we are, we’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy. You still had votes but the votes were just power grabs like you see in Iran, and other places in South America, like Chavez is running down in Venezuela. People become more dependent on the government so that they’re easy to manipulate. And they keep voting for more government because that’s where their security is. When our immigrants get here, they’re worried, because they see it happening here.

With only a little ingenuity, you could argue that DeMint’s words qualified as a not too inadequate description of the terminal phase of the Weimar Republic, especially the years 1930-32, when Chancellor Heinrich Bruning ruled by decree... OK, OK, let’s try a more serious reply: DeMint’s remark exposes the real harm conservatives do to themselves by indulging in extremist talk. Some liberals may think that Fox News is an instrumentality by which conservative elites deceive and manipulate the yokels. Not so. By any definition, a Republican senator belongs to the conservative elite – and yet he obviously watches Fox News too, and is affected by it. And these kinds of overstatements distract and detract from the core and true Republican message that the major actions of the Obama administration do open the way to very serious future abuses of power. You don’t have to worry that the US will go the way of the Weimar Republic to worry that the concentration of financial and political power by way of programs like TARP will change American society for the worse. Why cannot conservatives and Republicans stick to saying that, without trying to improve the argument by crazy-sounding analogies that discredit rather than enhance the message?