NRCC Takes Down Altered Video Featuring Hitler, Pelosi
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is in rapid-response mode these days when it comes to partisan criticism of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
The latest incident: a tweet by the National Republican Congressional Committee linking to a Web video spoofing a 2004 movie about Adolf Hitler’s final days.
The doctored subtitles in the video translate not into a rant about the Allied Forces but about the Democratic-led attempt to overhaul the nation’s health care system. The spoof video quotes Hitler as declaring that Pelosi is on his side when it comes to supporting socialized health care and that, like her, “I don’t give a s— about the American people.—
The NRCC tweeted that it is a “funny video,— but the DCCC wasn’t laughing. “The NRCC’s despicable promotion of a video comparing Speaker Pelosi’s effort to reform health insurance in America to Adolf Hitler’s extermination of millions is a shocking new low that must be condemned,— DCCC spokeswoman Jennifer Crider said in a statement.
NRCC spokesman John Randall admitted the committee had “made an error in linking to this video, and it has been taken down.—
Pelosi is a top target for Republicans, who are hoping to use her polarizing image to drag down vulnerable Democrats in conservative districts in 2010.
Democrats, however, are now fighting back. The reaction to the Twitter post comes after last week’s dust-up over an NRCC e-mail criticizing Pelosi’s stance on Afghanistan and expressing hope that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, “is able to put her in her place.— Democrats objected loudly, calling that language sexist.
Expect the competition to define Pelosi, and the debate over the acceptable lengths to which the criticism of the San Francisco Democrat can go, to be an ongoing theme in the coming midterm elections.