Rick Santorum has got to go - a call to action

Republicans Repeal Godwin's Law - Stirling Newberry

Santorum crossed the line today and Stirling Newberry has the goods on him:

References to fascism and naziism are common in overheated rhetoric. There is also the more delicate matter of real comparisons. The Nazi state pioneered so many things, technical and political, and then proceded to unleash them as horror, that every modern nation, if it looks over its shoulder, finds a leering SS officer in the distance as a warning. A warning as to what unrestrained powers of surveillance and the party state can do if left without check or ethical boundary.

Which is why the Santorum remarks comparing stopping the filibuster to Hitler's occupation of Paris in 1942 are, simply put, an offense which the Senate should censure.

It was Trent Lott who stated that impeachable was "anything which brought disrepute" to the government. And given the long history of the Republicans raising hackles over Hitler references - including one which was a submission to an internet competition - the standard of disrepute is met. If Lott's overpraising of segregationism is enough to force an individual from the leadership of his party's caucus in the Senate, and if an affair with a prostitute enough to bring censure on the head of Barney Frank in the House, then this kind of explosive rhetoric in a time of war is an unconscionable attack on the patriotism and Americanism of his fellow members of the Senate.

Given that Saddam was compared to Hilter, Senator Santorum's remarks are an attempt to equate his political enemies with enemies of the state. We cannot survive in a polity where the great and mighty may slur their political opponents with this brush, particularly when the powers of the government are extended as part of the War on Terrorism and the Patriot Act. A government which has been entrusted some of the usual liberties of individuals must not take liberties itself.

But even more profoundly it reveals that tiresomely obvious truth: reactionaries are motivated by hate. It is clear that Senator Santorum hates his political opponents, and hates them to an immoderate degree. Since he cannot behave with the decorum expected of a Senator, it is time that that body, if it had any courage, relieved him of the stress and strain of attaining a standard of good manners to which he is clearly incapable of holding himself to. So in addition to censure, the Senate should, again, if it had any honesty about the powers which it has voted the government, and the grave meaning which those powers imply, expel him from the Senate, and declare the seat vacant, to be filled by the normal process of the state of Pennsylvania.

This is a call to action of sorts. If you've got a blog, please post about this. Email your friends. Leave comments where appropriate. Spread the word.

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