Posted on 03/01/2016 12:59:47 PM PST by MarvinStinson
The Washington Post is begging primary voters to reconsider their support for Republican front-runner Donald Trump, and warned this week that the businessman's political ascendency is not unlike that of other famous dictators, including Adolf Hitler.
"You don't have to go back to history's most famous example, Adolf Hitler, to understand that authoritarian rulers can achieve power through the ballot box," the Post's editorial board said Tuesday, explaining how it considers the casino tycoon's bid for the White House a "threat to democracy."
"In the world today, it has become almost commonplace for elected leaders to lock the door behind them once they achieve power. Vladi¬mir Putin in Russia, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey — all found ways once in power to restrict opposition, muzzle the media and erode checks and Presidential candidates from both parties are battling Tuesday in primary events in more than 10 states.
Political pundits and commentators are predicting Trump will win big in Tuesday evening's GOP races against Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson for the available 595 delegates. That has the Post terrified.
"Mr. Trump gives ample reason to fear that he would not respect traditional limits on executive authority. He promotes actions that would be illegal, such as torture. He intimates that he would use government to attack those who displease him," it wrote.
"He promises diktats — impose a tariff, build a wall — as if Congress is nothing but an inconvenience. His vow to round up and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, while perhaps not requiring congressional action, would necessitate a kind of intrusive police power this country has never seen," they added.
Though the Post holds out hope that Trump will fail either in the GOP primary or the general election, they warn that his campaign itself marks a dangerous turn in American politics.
"Politics is never free of rough-and-tumble accusations, wild exaggerations and unrealistic promises. But when Mr. Trump cheers the assault on one protester at his rally and says of another, 'I'd like to punch him in the face,' that is something new and different," it wrote.
"It is out of the ordinary when a candidate recycles demonstrably false Internet rumors ... and stands by them even when they are disproved," the paper added. "That he has difficulty repudiating the most odious white terrorist group in U.S. history; that he feels no need to explain, debate or defend his pie-in-the-sky proposals; that he degrades and disparages women, Mexicans, Jews, Muslims, people with disabilities — these are challenges to the core functioning of any democracy."
There's nothing wrong with worrying about border security, they added, and there's certainly nothing wrong with worrying about national security and terrorism.
"But Mr. Trump is pandering to those fears, not offering solutions. In so doing, he is insulting voters with genuine concerns. We continue to believe that Americans deserve better than that — and are better than that," it added.
It’s even hard to spell math.
Hindenburg elected him. /s
One of many village idiots of Washington, DC. The first one in any argument to go full Nazi Alert is the weaker argument. That rule works every time with America's media and political operatives.
It’s the Wash Post. They can’t be expected to understand the complexities of the Weimar parliamentary system.
They just say “Hitler” a lot.
March, 1933 election
Nazis - 17,277,180 votes, 288 seats
SPD - 7,516,243 votes, 128 seats
Communists - 4,848,058 votes, 81 seats
Catholic Center - 4,424,905 votes, 70 seats
National People’s = 3,136,760 52 seats
Barvarian People’s - 1,073,552 18 seats
Yeah, I get tired of hearing that Hitler was elected, too. Support for the Nazis was eroding by the time of the last election. Hitler always claimed he would take power legally. He was indeed appointed to the chancellorship legally, but once he achieved that office, the SA basically beat his opponents into submission; then came the Reichstag fire, and emergency powers to basically kill his enemies, and it was all over for Germany.
That's what they meant.
-PJ
If Trump kills 20 million people, then comparisons to Hitler will be valid.
Think about it folks! ;^)
There was another who was going to make his country great again.
A country frustrated by unemployment, by communist bullcrap, by a failing economy, by feelings of military inferiority, of lost prestige on the world stage.
In their ire the people voted for the outsider, the guy who promised them greatness and vengeance against those who had created the situation.
He promised to get the burden of the non-producers off of the people's collective back. He promised to rid them of the evils of those he deemed to be unfit to be in the country. He focused the people's hatred onto those groups as he built up the military, inside the country and out, for 'national security'.
His police were militarized and under ultimate central control.
He did this in a country where, in the schools, the youth had been focused on their physical being, where the classes all had a purpose, to raise little supporters who would march in lockstep with the State, and any opinion which did not support that State was considered treasonous.
He put his country back to work. He even garnered the praise of some of those who would, in a few years fight him in one of the bloodiest conflicts in world history.
He started out working with the rest of the government but soon abolished it. They stood in the way of his vision.
He even said he would fight the communists, and did.
By then, no one who was not an ardent supporter out of love either became one out of fear, or for the money, or whispered their dissent carefully to those they trusted at their peril, because if they were found out they would be stripped of their belongings, position, rank, and credentials for the good of the country, hunted down, and exterminated.
Stuff Godwin's law. We are on a very real social precipice and this is no time for political correctness.
If you can't see the parallels, you haven't looked.
Normalcy bias won't prevent it, only reason and adhering to the Constitution will.
Principles are more important than ever.
Her staggering incompetence precludes those kinds of comparisons.
He likely would have been in time. He was appointed to the post of Chancellor as a preemptive move by Hindenburg.
Hitler received 37% of the vote in the runoff of 1932.
> HITLER WAS NOT ELECTED!!!!
Who do you thing you are? The media? Don’t you know the media write history and it is what they say and it may change tomorrow.
Reminded me of the night of the Paris attacks. CNN’s anchor spent over 30 minutes saying “the worst attack Paris has ever experienced” and “France has never tried to close their border before”. Someone with knowledge of WWII finally told her about the war during a commercial break and she started adding “in recent memory”.
What next? ....................... Vlad the Impaller married to Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed.
So was Castro
If Trump is like Castro will Obama smile and shake his hand?
Amazing. Just amazing. Every cliché possible is being employed.
“It is out of the ordinary when a candidate recycles demonstrably false Internet rumors — that thousands of American Muslims celebrated the attacks of 9/11, for example — and stands by them even when they are disproved.”
“That he has difficulty repudiating the most odious white terrorist group in U.S. history; ... that he degrades and disparages women, Mexicans, Jews, Muslims, people with disabilities — these are challenges to the core functioning of any democracy.”
Because Hitler is incorrectly perceived as right wing. The rest are secret Demo closet masturbatory aides.
Of all lefty end tales, I personally like Robespierre's the best: screaming like a bitch until the blade came down. Mussolini and Ceausescu are close seconds.
Give it a rest. Trump had the basic story correct, just apparently not the numbers. Yet you join the Washington Post in nitpicking a detail that is trivial to the larger point Trump was making. Nice company you are keeping.
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