Really? This is a problem?
In the latest escalation in the Obama administration's war of words with congressional Republicans, White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer compared the GOP to terrorists in an interview on CNN Thursday. "We are for cutting spending. We are for reforming out tax codes, reforming out entitlements," Pfeiffer told Jake Tapper. "What we're not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest. We’re not going to do that."Hugh Hewitt is appalled, as is Mediaite house wingnut Noah Rothman:
Mediaite's Noah Rothman joined radio host Hugh Hewitt to react to that rather out-there comparison, observing that whereas a few years ago, this would have been shocking, now it’s just yet another outlandish piece of hyperbole that’s just "par for the course now."Hewitt got Congressman Tom Cotton, a former Army Ranger, to tell us he was shocked, shocked, at Pfeiffer's statement.
Hewitt asked, "What's next? Boehner is Assad and Ted Cruz is the Nairboi Westgate mall shooters?"
HH: ... Now my question is, have any of your colleagues on the Hill said anything about this, yet? Or is it just not widely known, the level to which they’ve stooped?That's from the transcript at Hewitt's site, where Hewitt (or his Web crew) also lapsed into incoherence:
TC: I think this is a new low to which they've stooped, Hugh, referring to some of their opponents in a legislative debate as suicide bombers. It was bad enough when they were calling us terrorists or anarchists or arsonists. Right now, most of my colleagues, I don't think, know, because as you say, it just happened a few hours ago. And we just finished up legislative business for the day, and I was actually at dinner with a few colleagues, and shared the remarks that Mr. Pfeiffer made with them. I think they were all, it’s fair to say, astonished....
Conservatives, of course, would never make a comparison like this.
Oh, wait:
That was from Pulitzer-winning wingnut cartoonist Michael Ramirez, shortly before Obamacare got through Congress. During the fight to pass the Affordable Care Act, a lot of right-wingers thought that was an apt comparison:
Rush: "Mullah Nancy Bin Pelosi ... is no different" than those who "convince all these people to put bombs on their kids." On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said: "Here's the way we have to start looking at Nancy Pelosi: Mullah Nancy Bin Pelosi. She's no different than these mullahs and these imams who convince all these people to put bombs on their kids and send them out there to blow up. ... That's exactly what she's doing to the Democrat Party. The only thing she can't do is promise them 73 virgins or whatever it is." [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 3/1/10]...And, of course, this never gets old on the right (or at least it didn't until, um, May 1, 2011):
Breitbart's Big Journalism calls Obama is the "suicide-bomber-in-chief." In a post on Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism website, Frank Ross wrote: "Mark Steyn is always right, whether he's writing about Andrew Lloyd Webber or, in this case, the suicide-bomber-in-chief, Barack Obama, who doesn't much care how many Democrats get sent to the electoral Elysian Fields -- or even whether he gets a second term -- as long as he can blow up the capitalist system from within." [Big Journalism, 3/6/10]
Wash. Times' Pruden compares Democrats to suicide bombers. In his Washington Times column, editor emeritus Wesley Pruden wrote: "You have to be a true believer in Barack Obama's radical agenda to be a Democrat in Congress, and believe with the intensity of a suicide bomber. Mr. Obama can't even promise a harem of virgins in paradise." [The Washington Times, 1/19/10]....
I don't recall any harrumphing about this from the likes of Hugh Hewitt. Do you?
