The National Republican Congressional Committee showed again how low they are willing to go politically by Tweeting a video that used a comparison between Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama to Adolf itler. And the Democrats showed once more how weak they are in responding to those kinds of tactics.
For years Republicans have resorted to the lowest kind of politics with the Democrats simply not knowing how to respond in kind. This is why there was such a big response to Alan Grayson, who showed that there is a Democrat who will not only stand up to Republican gutter politics but give them back all they can handle.
The NRCC had used their Twitter account to link to a video that made comparisons between Nancy Pelosi, Obama, health care reform and Adolf Hitler ( the video can be seen here).
The Democratic response to this official Tweet by the NRCC was they “went way to far”.
Well yes, one could say that.
A Democratic spokesperson also called it “despicable”. Well, yes it was that too. But there was no official or coorindinated response from Democrats that was equal to the task of making the NRCC accountable for their dirty politics when one would think any Democratic strategist with two cents for a brain could take this and make the Republicans pay dearly, not only in terms of their politics, but also in a practical way to turn the health care debate completely against them.
This has been an almost chronic problem with Democrats going back to John Kerry;s ineffectual and, weak response to the Swift Boat attacks on his service. It showed in Obama’s weak, almost non-existent response to organized attacks against the health care plan not just with lies and swastikas, but with Republican Senator Jim DeMint going so far as to openly admit the purpose for defeating health care reform is to defeat Obama. In other words this doesnt have anything to do with what’s best for the country, it has to do with what is best for the Republicans which is to try and do anything they can to get back into power.
It would have been easy to have taken that twitter link and eviscerate the Republicans with it. I could have come up with ways to do it in between bites of a ham sandwich But the Democrats, other than complaining about it, have not gone on the offensive.
And it’s not the first time. Obama has been attacked repeatedly by the Republicans in ways they ranged from the calculated Republican strategy of comparing him to Hitler and health care reform to Nazi ideology, to Joe Wilson and Republican Senator Jim DeMint admitting that the point of defeating health care is to defeat Obama.
Obama’s response to all this was practically a “boys will be boys” joviality as if it was just political hijinks instead of going on the attack and pointing out that Republicans were willing to undermine an important issue facing the country in order to wage a political attack against him for their own political gain and lust for power.
What the NRCC video link showed was that all those Obama Hitler signs and swastikas at the town hall meetings were not products of spontaneous”grassroots” anger, however derranged and misplaced, but part of a calculated premeditated strategy to make those comparisons not just to the country at large but especially to the news media who they correctly assumed would focus on those signs and give them more exposure than they deserved..
Sooner or later the Democrats have to learn to fight back. Instead of what they and Obama have been doing. Which in another time was called appeasement.