There have been plenty of tremendous and troubling leaps made when trying to express outrage over the Islamic Center proposed near Ground Zero (this weekend with Sarah Palin, who called it the "9/11 mosque" on Twitter, for example), but Newt Gingrich may win the award for most offensive analogy.
Building the mosque near Ground Zero, says the former Speaker, is like putting a Nazi sign near the Holocaust Museum.
Gingrich has made this comparison for a couple days now, including this morning on Fox & Friends, when he said:
The folks who want to build this mosque, who are really radical Islamists, who want to triumphfully (sic) prove they can build a mosque next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists. Those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community. They're trying to make a case about supremacy... This happens all the time in America. Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor.
Of course the folks behind the Cordoba House Cultural Center aren't radical Islamists. They're exactly the opposite. As Wikipedia notes about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the spiritual leader and driving force:
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, (born in 1948, in Kuwait) is an Arab-American Muslim imam, author, and activist whose stated goal is to improve relations between the Muslim World and the West.He has been Imam of Masjid al-Farah, a New York City mosque, since 1983.
He has written three books on Islam and its place in contemporary Western society, including What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America, and founded two non-profit organizations whose stated missions are to enhance the discourse on Islam in society. He has condemned the 9/11 attacks as un-Islamic and called on the U.S. government to reduce the threat of terrorism by altering its Middle Eastern foreign policy. Author Karen Armstrong, among others, has praised him for his attempts to build bridges between the West and the Muslim world.
His congregation is Sufi, the mystical branch of Islam, about as far away from fundamentalists as its possible to be.
But in Gingrich's bigoted mind, all Moslems are radical Islamists. That is the very essence of his bigotry: "They" are all the same: evil. For no reason. Just because they are. And he's not just some guy. He's the former Speaker of the House, and a serious potential candidate for President in 2012. In the GOP world, he's as heavyweight as it gets.
Newt is a bigot and he is the face of the GOP.
And not just the clown face of Sarah Palin, but the "serious intellectual" face, as has been for nearly 20 years now.
What's more, at the same time that Newt's spouting his bigoted hatred, other conservatives are busy trying to whitewash themselves and their movment, in a continuing effort to deny their racist past, as well their present. For example, the pseudo-intellectual James Taranto at the WSJ:
The intellectual godfather of the modern conservative movement was Russell Kirk, and Kirk's great hero was the political theorist Edmund Burke, who fervently supported King George and the other royalty of the late 1700s in their battle with the forces of democracy. Kirk, in his book The Conservative Mind, noted that Burke "was not ashamed to acknowledge the allegiance of humble men whose sureties are prejudice and prescription." No, indeed. In fact, the conservative movement has always been a happy mix of wealthy elites and angry bigots, working together to defend the status quo and the power of those elites. Today, this coalition rears its ugly head once again, as super-wealthy insurance executives supply angry right wingers the money to organize themselves to disrupt town hall meetings and physically intimidate Congresspeople.
Erudite elitist William Buckley was delighted to align himself with Southern segregationists, writing columns strongly defending them. Ronald Reagan raised most of his money from big business, but was pleased to go to the town in Mississippi where James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered, and give a speech about states' rights. And John McCain said nothing while people in his crowds were yelling racial slurs and calling out in reference to Obama "Kill him."
Now insurance company execs are thrilled and excited to be sending money out to right wing groups to organize the Birthers and their ilk to shout down citizens coming to town hall meetings to discuss health care reform with their members of Congress.
It's time to take our democracy back from this combination of big money and their truly extreme allies. It's time to take this unholy alliance on, and beat it. If we let this coalition run our country, we are in deep trouble.
U.S. Rep. Steve King on Friday announced his bid for a fourth term in Congress -- and he raised some eyebrows with comments about National Security under a potential Barack Obama administration....
It was during a stop at the KICD studios in north Spencer that he also talked about the presidential campaign and his decision not to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Tom Harkin.
Not running against Harkin. So, not totally stupid. But...
King said he would support presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in part because of alternatives coming from the Democratic Party.
"I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father might have been," he said.
"I'll just say this: When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?"
He continued: "I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror."
King thinks radical Islamists will say the United States has capitulated because the Obama administration would be pulling troops out of any conflict associated with al-Qaida.
"Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter," King said. "It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world. That has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict."
He continued: "There are implications that have to do with who he is and the position that he's taken. If he were strong on national defense and said 'I'm going to go over there and we're going to fight and we're going to win, we'll come home with a victory,' that's different. But that's not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he's elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror."
Once again proving that racism makes you stupid. So stupid that it never occurs to him the folks who'll be really glad are the mainstream Muslim moderates. Because, of course, in King's world, there are no mainstream Muslim moderates.
Believe it or not, the party of Willie Horton is worried about appearing racist--but that's only the beginning of their problems, as their presumptive candidate, John McCain may be starting to have problems with his base. No, not the conservatives, stupid! The media! With so many bigots behind them, it was only a matter of time before the GOP started suffering from friendly fire, "big time" as their number two war criminal would say.
The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved. The secretive effort underscores the enormous risk senior GOP operatives see for a party often criticized for its insensitivity to minorities in campaigns dating back to the 1960s.
"Insensitivity." That's a great word for a party that's run against women, blacks, gays and immigrants every election since 1968. As Steve Bennen noted at The Carpetbagger Report:
Let me put it this way: I'm supposed to believe that the Republican National Committee, which has never shown so much as a hint of concern about propriety in modern political times, is not only worried about crossing lines of respect when it comes to diversity, it's also leaking word to the Politico about being only worried about crossing lines of respect when it comes to diversity? The RNC?
It seems a little far-fetched.
Look, RNC officials know the difference between a clean attack and a dirty one. They recognize when an attack is driven by race-based politics, and when one is substantive and above-board. The only reason they would need a focus group to help them out on this is if they planned to walk right up to the decency line, and wanted to know how far they could go without crossing it.
But I actually think that Steve is being too kind....
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