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Monday, October 17, 2005

VA-Gov: Despicable: Jerry Kilgore Trivializes the Holocaust

Posted by DavidNYC

I am angry beyond words right now:

The Republican candidate for Virginia governor is drawing fire for campaign ads that suggest his Democratic opponent is so averse to the death penalty he would have spared Adolf Hitler from execution.

...

A commercial featuring death penalty proponent Stanley Rosenbluth has him looking into the camera and saying: "Tim Kaine says Adolf Hitler doesn't qualify for the death penalty. This was one of the worst mass murderers in modern times."

Tim wrote about this absolutely despicable ad last week, but I didn't realize Kilgore was such a wretched human being that he'd stoop to invoking Hitler in such a grotesque way.

The Holocaust is one of the most serious, tragic and defining events in living memory, if not the most. Using it for political gains is beyond unacceptable. This isn't some freshman philosophy class where TAs toss half-baked hypotheticals at their students. This is the public arena, and we are dealing with the most sensitive parts of history. Jerry Kilgore insults the memories of millions, living and dead, when he goes on the air with trash like this.

And he certainly knows better. I'd say he should act better, too, and withdraw this ad - but someone whose judgment is so impaired that they greenlighted this ad in the first place probably would never heed such advice.

Posted at 01:57 PM in 2005 Elections, Virginia | Technorati

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Comments

What really makes me mad is not so much that a worthless Republican like Kilgore would make an ad like this, but the fact that this kind of outrageous slime seems to consistently work. It's hard to imagine that it will ever end.

I don't have a moral problem with the death penalty, myself, but I find positions like Kaine's to be highly commendable. The people who receive the death penalty are often among the most despicable members of society, after all. If someone is willing to stick up for the basic humanity of even those people, I think that says a lot about their moral compass.

Posted by: Steve M at October 17, 2005 02:25 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment