Sen. Rand Paul Uses “Overplayed” Hitler Reference on Senate Floor

David Streeter — March 6, 2013 – 3:42 pm | Abusive Holocaust Rhetoric | Rand Paul Comments (0) Add a comment

On the Senate floor today, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) used—in his own words—an “overplayed” Hitler reference during his filibuster.

The International Business Times reported:

Paul departed from his non-stop talk on drones to talk about economic conditions in Germany prior to Hitler’s rise to power.

“It was a chaotic situation,” the Kentucky senator said. “Out of that chaos, Hitler was elected democratically. They elected him out of this chaos.”

Paul addressed how some of Obama’s critics have compared the president to Hitler, saying he felt it was an inappropriate analogy.

“The point isn’t that anybody in our country is Hitler. I’m not accusing anybody of being that evil,” he said. “I think it’s an overplayed and misused analogy. But what I am saying is that in a democracy, you could someday elect someone who is very evil. That’s why we don’t give the power to the government. And it’s not an accusation of this president or anybody in this body. It’s a point to be made that occasionally even a democracy gets it wrong.”

If Senator Paul thinks that Hitler references are ‘overplayed,’ then maybe he should cease using them and urge others to do the same—as NJDC has previously asked him to do. Paul should apologize immediately and follow his own advice by refraining from similar statements in the future.

Prior to giving the Tea Party’s official rebuttal to the State of the Union, NJDC called on Senator Paul to denounce the statements made by the Tea Party Nation earlier in the day. Paul failed to do so.

Senator Paul himself invoked the Holocaust in September 2012 to protest a court decision.

Prior to entering the Senate, he established a record of using this type of language, as documented in this 2010 piece from TPM. 

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