Goodwin's Law Violation in Pennsylvania

[4thofeleven]

 

Pennsylvania Republicans are disavowing an e-mail sent to Jewish voters that likens a vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to events that led up to the Holocaust. "Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008," the e-mail reads. "Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let's not make a similar one this year!"

- Associated Press
 

I’d say this sort of thing is a side effect of the drawn out campaign, as people get sick of hearing the same old arguments for and against the candidates, so crackpot arguments start being used just to interject some novelty into a stale process… but that would be assuming that the US election started with a sane discussion of the candidates.

I have a theory that the United States has never actually fully abandoned its roots as a revolutionary state, and that’s why there seems to be a significant section of the American population who cannot interpret elections in any context other than as the final battle of the forces of good against the armies of darkness…

To be fair, American political discourse does seem to be slowly moving towards sanity; the wild accusations and mud-slinging are fairly subdued compared to those of early nineteenth century American campaign.