"If the GOP Senate Minority Leader were to grab a Senate page and threaten to kill the innocent victim if the Democrats refused to capitulate to the party’s demands on tax cuts, we would all quickly arrive at the conclusion that the Minority Leader had lost his mind and gone too far. We simply, under no circumstances, will not tolerate threatening someone’s life in order to get what you want.
"Yet, by playing with the denial of the only economic lifeline left to millions of unemployed, this is precisely what the GOP is doing."
The rantings of a Newsweek writer or MSNBC host, right? Wrong.
That fine hyperbole was brought to you by Forbes.com Policy Page blog contributor Rick Ungar, as he described the Senate GOP's staunch refusal to play ball on Democratic-priority legislation until a deal was reached with President Obama to extend the Bush tax cuts for every income-tax payer.
But Ungar was only warming up. He had yet to get around to the Nazi comparison.
"With the hostage-taking tactic having worked so well, the Republicans have decided to do it again," Ungar lamented in his December 6 post. "This time, it’s our senior citizens who are about to be duct taped, gagged and tied to their wheelchairs."
Ungar then hinted that the GOP were Nazi-like by foisting a Sophie's Choice-like scenario on President Obama regarding the Medicare "Doctor Fix" (emphasis mine):
The president is, once again, put in a no-win situation where he has to choose between one of his children. He either must give up the poor or the seniors. Either way he loses. And isn’t that precisely the idea?
The plan is also diabolical beyond belief as the proponents of this behavior –the very same people who have held the unemployed hostage to benefit the bankers who put the millions out of work in the first place–continue the kidnapping of national policy. One can only imagine whom their next victim might be.
I recognize that you may favor continuing the Bush cuts for everyone and that’s fine. If you disapprove of health care reform – fine again. But are you really prepared to tolerate hostage taking by your leadership in order to get what you want? When there are elected officials willing to put a gun to the head of millions of suffering Americans to provide a tax cut to those who need it like a hole in the head or threaten the denial of health care to our elderly in order to continue denying care to the poor, is this a tactic we are willing to accept?
When your leaders create a Sophie’s Choice between the old and the poor, are we really going to be okay with that?
As if that weren't enough, Ungar went for the leftist trope trifecta, bookending his post with Joseph McCarthy references:
On June 9, 1954, Joseph Welch, appearing as general counsel for the United States Army, sat before a Senate panel and its megalomaniacal star attraction, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, and reached his breaking point. As McCarthy attempted to unfairly paint an associate in Welch’s law firm with a red brush, Welsh uttered the now famous words, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
[...]
Hasn’t the moment arrived when we must point the finger at these Senators who have lost all perspective and broken with faith with old fashioned American goodness and say, “Have you no sense of decency, Senator? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
To borrow from the late great Orioles PA announcer Rex Barney, give that fan an MSNBC contract!