Thursday, May 19, 2005

What is Santorum babbling about?
John Byrne at Raw Story has this quote from Rick Santorum on the floor of the Senate about an hour ago.
Some are suggesting we're trying to change the law, we're trying to break the rules. Remarkable. Remarkable hubris. I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is the way we confirm judges. Broken by the other side two years ago, and the audacity of some members to stand up and say, how dare you break this rule. It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 "I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine." This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster. It was an understanding and agreement, and it has been abused. In a sense, what we see here on the floor of the United States.

Byrne reads it as Santorum comparing the Democrats' attempts to keep the filibuster to Hitler's moves in 1942. I read it as Santorum saying the Democrats are calling him a Nazi. That's sort of a reverse invocation of Godwin's Law. This is from the closed captioning, so it is not an official transcript and the punctuation is just guesswork by someone trying to take very fast dictation. The punctuation is the problem, especially the placement of the quotes. Where does the quote really begin and end?

Should it be "how dare you break this rule?"--in which case his interpretation is correct. Or is it "how dare you break this rule. It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me? How dare you bomb my city? It's mine."--in which case my interpretation is correct.

In either case, it's outrageous hyperbole. And Santorum is an idiot for thinking the conquest of Paris took place in 1942 (it took place in June 1940). Maybe he thinks the war in Europe didn't begin till after Pearl Harbor.

Update: Those who have seen the video (I still haven't) say Byrne's reading is the correct one. I can live with that. It doesn't make Santorum any less of an idiot or national embarassment.

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