Vile, but not Bachmann’s fault

Rep. Steve Israel, among many others, is furious over the disgusting use of holocaust imagery during Michele Bachmann’s health-care protests earlier this week — you can watch a short video he recorded after the break. It’s hard to find fault with his anger. Quite frankly, I don’t feel the need to actually show the posters on this blog; for those of you who haven’t seen them, they featured photographs of piles of bodies killed in the holocaust, with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945.”

I’m angry about it to, but in this case, I don’t believe it was specifically Michele Bachmann’s fault. Whatever I may think about Bachmann, I do understand that while she organized the rally, she certainly did not ask her supporters to bring posters like that.

I don’t believe Bachmann owes us an apology. I do believe, though, that she should condemn the rhetoric of her supporters who have compared Maybe some of you won’t see much of a distinction there, but I do. Rep. Israel finds fault with Bachmann for not condemning the posters during the rally; I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was caught up in the event and didn’t notice. At this point, though, she’s aware. She needs to make it clear that she doesn’t support this sort of rhetoric, and that it does not represent her views. That doesn’t seem like much to ask.

Let me finish with a quick message to the protesters who brought these signs. You’re entitled to be opposed to health care. I disagree with you, but that happens. In fact, you even have the right to display disgusting posters comparing health care reform to the Holocaust — I will never claim that you don’t have the right of free speech. But if you really believe that an effort to reform our nation’s health care system is in any way similar to the malicious, premeditated slaughter of millions of innocent people, you are beyond vile.

I won’t claim that liberals have never engaged in this sort of rhetoric — I know for sure that it has happened. Just like liberals as a group didn’t deserve to take the rap for a few bad seeds, neither do conservatives as a group deserve to take the rap for those who were out of line at the health care protest. But those who did engage in it should be condemned in the strongest possible terms — by Republicans as well as Democrats.