The Crimes of Rick Santorum

In his column in today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank goes to some trouble to convince his readers that Rick Santorum has been calling President Obama a Nazi. If Milbank's claim is correct, then Santorum is guilty of behavior that can only be described as despicable. The world may have known worse tyrants — Joseph Stalin comes to mind as a possibility — but none causes the visceral reaction of associating someone with Adolf Hitler, head of the National Socialist ("Nazi") Party. Calling President Obama a Nazi is, given his position as Head of State, tantamount to calling him another Hitler.

Despite Milbank's best efforts, the evidence is, at best, thin. He bases it on Santorum's oft-used comparisons between various Nazi programs, and those of today's federal government. Milbank does not cite one single instance where Santorum has called anyone except an actual member of the Nazi Party a Nazi, but assumes that drawing comparisons as a rhetorical device is the same as spewing out hate speech.

No, Milbank presents no evidence to prove that Santorum has ever called President Obama a Nazi or compared him to Hitler. There is plenty of innuendo, however. Take, for example, Milbank's statement, "Santorum is such a stranger to democratic give-and-take that he thinks it's okay to label everybody else as Nazis."

Notice the cleverness of Milbank's statement. He does not state as a fact that Santorum has ever at any time called anyone a Nazi. Even given the rather tepid protection public figures have against libel that might get Milbank into trouble.

No, what Milbank says is that — in his opinion (unless Milbank claims the power to read minds) — Santorum thinks it's okay to call everybody else Nazis. In other words, based on his less-than-generous and rather slanted interpretation of various statements and actions by Santorum, Milbank is actually saying what he thinks Santorum thinks.

Thus, without actually saying so, Milbank leaves the reader with the impression that Santorum habitually calls anyone with whom he disagrees a Nazi, when, in strict truth, Milbank has not presented any evidence to prove that Santorum has ever done any such thing. Nor would a reasonable person without an ax to grind infer any such thing from the quotes Milbank gives or the incidents he cites.

Googling "Santorum is calling Obama a Nazi" gave approximately 21.8 million matches. A quick check revealed that possibly a third of them were claims that Santorum was calling President Obama a Nazi or Hitler, but citing no specific instance. About two-thirds seemed to be denials by Santorum that he has ever done any such thing. Nowhere was there an actual quote by Santorum given.

All Milbank did was give the standard unanswerable — and completely dishonest — argument, "I know what you're thinking." If you deny that is what you are thinking, you're a liar. If you don't deny it, you're guilty. As anyone who has ever tried to respond to a furious boy- or girlfriend who pulls out that argument, there's no way you're going to win. The only thing anyone can do is retreat and get out of the line of fire until things cool down . . . such as after the election, which would probably suit Milbank just fine.

What is baffling about the allegation that Santorum calls President Obama and, apparently, everyone else on earth Nazis is (aside from the lack of evidence), however, the utter disingenuousness of the accusation. For eight years people called George Bush a Hitler, even coining a neologism, "Bushitler," that not only explicitly called Bush a reincarnation of the man many people regard as the greatest monster in history, but also hinted at large masses of bovine residue. Googling "Bushitler" gave 13,500 matches, while "Bush is Hitler" gave 28.5 million. Putting quotes around the words so that the exact phrase pops up gave 19,700 matches. "Bush is a Nazi" gave 12,600 matches.

The computer word count for this blog is 666. You know what that means.

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