washington (ap) | A Jewish Republican group accused Sen. Robert Byrd of making an “inappropriate and reprehensible” comparison between Adolf Hitler’s Nazis and a Senate GOP plan to block Democrats from filibustering.
Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, issued a written statement.
“With his knowledge of history and his own personal background as a KKK member, he should be ashamed for implying that his political opponents are using Nazi tactics,” Brooks said.
Byrd spokesman Tom Gavin denied that Byrd (D-W.Va.), had compared Republicans to Hitler. He said that instead, the reference to Nazis in a Senate speech was meant to underscore that the past should not be ignored.
“Terrible chapters of history ought never be repeated,” Gavin said. “All one needs to do is to look at history to see how dangerous it is to curb the rights of the minority.”
In his comments Byrd defended the right senators have to use filibusters — procedural delays that can kill an item unless 60 of the 100 senators vote to move ahead.
Byrd cited Hitler’s 1930s rise to power by, in part, pushing legislation through the German parliament that seemed to legitimize his ascension.
“We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men,” Byrd said. “But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.”
Byrd then quoted historian Alan Bullock, saying Hitler “turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.”
He added, “That is what the nuclear option seeks to do.”
The nuclear option is the nickname for the proposal to end filibusters of judicial nominations because of the devastating effect the plan, if enacted, would have on relations between Democrats and Republicans.