Weigel

Ted Cruz: Funding Obamacare Is Basically Like Appeasing Hitler

Pretty early into his Democrat-approved floor speech against Obamacare,* Sen. Ted Cruz deployed the debating skills that have made it into every snarky or earnest profile of his career—and compared his fellow Republicans to Neville Chamberlain.

“Look, we saw in Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who told the British people, ‘Accept the Nazis,’ ” said Cruz. ” ‘Yes, they’ll dominate the continent of Europe, but that’s not our problem. Let’s appease them. Why? Because it can’t be done. We can’t possibly stand against them.’ And in America there were voices that listened to that. I expect those same pundits who say it can’t be done, had it been in  the 1940s, we would have listened to them.”

TPM quickly acquired video of this.

Personally, I find the ban on Nazi comparisons to be limiting, and think we should get rid of it. But I’m not an award-winning debater! I was shocked that Cruz glided so quickly from comparing his skeptics to those who didn’t think we could land on the moon to those who appeased Hitler.

*Technically it’s against cloture on the continuing resolution to fund the government, but that’s cumbersome, isn’t it?