July 19, 2009

SC's Jim DeMint is the most extreme right wing Senator in the House of Lourdes and he's taking it as far as he can. Well, I should withhold my judgment until we see where we are by the end of the month.

Conservative leaders will push delay any vote on health care reform until after the August recess to capitalize on what they say is a growing tide of opposition to reform measures, they said on a conference call with "tea party" participants today.

"I can almost guarantee you this thing won't pass before August, and if we can hold it back until we go home for a month's break in August," members of Congress will hear from "outraged" constituents, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said on the call, which was organized by the group Conservatives for Patients Rights.

"Senators and Congressmen will come back in September afraid to vote against the American people," DeMint predicted, adding that "this health care issue Is D-Day for freedom in America."

"If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," he said.

My pal Steve Benen added:

Last week, Sen. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, arguably the chamber's most right-wing member, told an audience at the National Press Club that the United States is currently "about where Germany was before World War II." Everything about his remarks -- the sense of history, the understanding of current events, the philosophy -- was a special kind of stupid. But DeMint seems quite pleased with himself, and keeps churning out new and creative insanity

Think Progress follows up with the audio from one of Nixon's hatchet men, G.Gordon Libby.

And while promoting his new book on the G. Gordon Liddy show yesterday, DeMint agreed with Gordon — who ironically has a history of expressing sympathetic views to Nazis — that Obama has created a government like that under Hitler:

LIDDY: But there’s something else that I remember because I’m a lot older than you are and it’s called national socialism and that’s where the government allows private people to continue to own industrial capacity and what have you but tells them what they may — must do with it. You know, you will make Messerschmidts, etc. That was national socialism. That seems to me the way we’re going.

DEMINT: You’re right we’ve got national socialism, national paternalism and our form of socialism seems more benign than the classical form that we noted in Europe.

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As Matt Yglesias previously wrote, “Look, comparing your domestic political rivals to Nazis is a time-honored tradition. But confusing the Nazis and Germany’s Social Democrats is a scandal.

The closer we get to health care reform---the crazier the debate gets. Even the media has turned hostile towards the health care debate. Just watch the way they frame every debate, every question and try to just shred it instead of bringing us news so we can to evaluate the state of health care. A major campaign pledge by all Democrats running for President was to reform health care, but they are trying to make it seem like it's some fringe idea now. Suddenly all Americans love their health care. How many stories have you seen by the MSM that highlight how the health insurance companies operate under the current system and how they dictate what shall be covered for you and your family? Not too many...

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