Bizarre, Politics, Society

Deutsch Tweet: Wisconsin GOP Candidate Criticized for Calling Hitler a “Strong Leader”

Just days after another GOP candidate was criticized for prancing around in a Nazi uniform, Wisconsin Republican state Senate candidate Dane Deutsch has been criticized for calling Adolph Hitler a “strong leader.”

Deutsch sent a tweet stating “Hitler and Lincoln were both strong leaders. Lincoln’s character made him the greater leader whose legacy and leadership still lives on!” For a guy named Deutsch, it played directly into his opponent’s hands who lambasted him for the tweet.

He later insisted that he was merely stating Hitler had a great influence on people. He insists that he was pointing out the difference between a leader with an evil and a leader with a righteous character — the latter having a more lasting legacy. That is a plausible explanation but Twitter is not the best means to make such profound thoughts in 140 characters or less. That may be a more Facebook chat item for the future.

Source; Tribune

119 thoughts on “Deutsch Tweet: Wisconsin GOP Candidate Criticized for Calling Hitler a “Strong Leader””

  1. Hitler has become part of our political dialog when it is ignorant to think that his strong leadership is simply what gave him the following he had in Germany. I am shocked at many of the statements made by the Right (not reich) but I assume that we are civilized enough and not so homogenous as to manipulated into those types of atrocities.

  2. begin excerpt from above MPR article:

    Coleen Rowley, the 9/11 whistleblower and former chief legal advisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis office, said the documents from 1970 shed light on the FBI’s far-reaching efforts to quash political dissent.

    “I think this really is valuable … because it’s basically history repeating what we have right now,” she said, noting the recent FBI raids at the homes of several anti-war organizers in Minneapolis. end excerpt

    (Another FOIA request is pending — the one related to the NTSB investigation.)

  3. Swarthmore mom:

    I, too, was a “big fan” — so many of “the good die young”, it seems.

    I have a lot of respect for Russ Feingold – and his lone vote against the Patriot Act, which has done great damage, IMO. It’s a close race. I don’t know where things stand at the moment.

  4. Anon Nurse I was a big fan of Wellstone. There is no politician like him today. When the plane crashed, some friends in Minnesota said Cheney was involved. I don’t think it is true ,but the Senate seat went to Coleman and the republicans got control of the Senate.

  5. What follows is a just a piece of the entire “ugly” picture. Let the truth continue to spill out — there are some wicked things going on domestically.

    By Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public RadioOctober 25, 2010

    From protester to senator, the FBI tracked Paul Wellstone

    http://minnesota.publicradio.org/projects/2010/wellstone-files/

    -from Democracy Now (today)

    FBI Documents Raises Questions over Paul Wellstone’s Death

    “Minnesota Public Radio has obtained the FBI record of the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who died in a plane crash eight years ago this week. The records show the FBI first tracked Wellstone in 1970 after he was arrested at an anti-Vietnam War protest. The records might also raise new questions about the plane crash that killed Wellstone, his wife, his daughter and three staffers. The National Transportation Safety Board determined the crash was caused by pilot error, but the FBI documents reveal for the first time that specific criminal leads were pursued by investigators. Part of the FBI probe focused on problems with the plane’s de-icing equipment. A caller from Florida said members of the American Trucking Association had planned to disconnect the plane’s de-icing equipment because they were upset with Wellstone’s efforts to expose organized crime in the trucking industry. The FBI files also reveal that Wellstone’s St. Paul office received a threatening postcard the day before the plane crash.”

  10. eniobob It could either be a good night or a huge night for the republicans. Then they can move on to their next goal. The next goal is oust Obama. Their means will be to tank the economy again, and he will be blamed.

  11. eniobob — Thanks for the additional information. (And I agree with your comment.)

  13. “anon nurse
    1, October 26, 2010 at 9:19 am
    Thanks for posting the TPM link, Swarthmore mom. It’s ugly out there — I know it for a fact.”

    Heres more fact:

    Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com

    Apparent Rand Paul Supporter Stomps On MoveOn Member’s Head (VIDEO) (UPDATED)
    First Posted: 10-25-10 11:49 PM | Updated: 10-26-10 10:13 AM

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/25/rand-paul-supporter-stomps-head_n_773857.html

    November the 2nd cannot come soon enough in my opinion,if the party that use to be known as The Repulican Party takes control of the House and or The Senate it will be “man up ” time and maybe this is what some people need to see that they are voting against their own self interest.

  14. This story brings to mind “The Family”—the group that is headquartered at C Street. I remember reading about members of the group admiring the leadership abilities of people like Hitler and Mao in Jeff Sharlet’s book “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.”

    Here’s a brief excerpt from a segment of Democracy Now in which Amy Goodman interviewed Jeff Sharlet (8/12/2009)
    http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/12/sharlet

    AMY GOODMAN: —counseling Congressman Tiahrt, which you quote. “You know Jesus said ‘You got to put Him before mother-father-brother sister’? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that’s what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn’t murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom.” That’s Doug Coe. And where did you get this?

    JEFF SHARLET: That is actually available on an audio sermon that you can find on the website of another Christian right group called the Navigators, with which the Family has always worked for decades.

    You can also find online video of Coe talking about the model of fellowship that he wants politicians to follow. He says, “Look at Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler, these three nobodies who get together, and look at all they were able to accomplish.” Now, he’ll be quick to say they’re evil men. This is not some neo-Nazi, you know, kind of conspiracy. It’s a sort of a fetish for power and strength. That’s the model. That’s why he says Hitler, Lenin, Mao.

    He’s also fond of saying to congressmen, “Who were the three men in the twentieth century who best understood the New Testament?” And it’s sort of a trick question, because maybe you say Martin Luther King, or maybe, if you’re conservative, you say Billy Graham. And again, it’s Hitler, Stalin and Mao. These are not aberrations in his speech. This is the core of his teaching, that the New Testament is about power and strength.

  15. Lincoln while President was not as strong as folks would like..he was more of a spiritual person that obeyed the laws of the universe..he would have never been elected but for a division amongst the Northern and Southern Democrats….Hitler on the other hand was charismatic…he I recall he only stepped foot in two battles did the entire time as leader…12 years he led or not…he did have a great propaganda machine…something the US has learned well…

  16. Thanks for posting the TPM link, Swarthmore mom. It’s ugly out there — I know it for a fact.

  17. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/male-rand-paul-supporter-stomps-head-of-female-moveon-member-outside-debate.php?ref=fpa It’s getting to be an almost daily occurrence where a tea party republican rally results in violence. The other day it involved Joe Miller. They only tore up my sign when when I went to the health care rally in the spring but that event gave me an awareness of what these people are really about. When I was kid, I always heard there were lots of Nazi’s in rural Wisconsin.

  18. “Hitler and Lincoln were both strong leaders. Lincoln’s character made him the greater leader whose legacy and leadership still lives on!”

    ****************

    Apricots and aborigines both begin with the letter “a” and thus are inexoribly linked.

    Oh, just keeping with Herr Deutsch’s brand of comparisons.

  20. It seems as if some of these candidates have a bet amongst themselves seeing who can say or do the most outrageous thing for that day.

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