Tighty Righties

This week's theme: Right Wing oppositionalism, for the sake of oppositionalism.

We begin with the President's statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which he said:

On January 27th, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we honor the memories of the 6 million Jews and millions of other innocent victims whose lives were tragically taken during the Holocaust over sixty years ago. Those who experienced the horrors of the cattle cars, ghettos, and concentration camps have witnessed humanity at its very worst and know too well the pain of losing loved ones to senseless violence.

Pretty uncontroversial, right? Pretty much nobody out there wants to argue that point, right?

Well, nobody except the stalwart Eliana Johnson of the National Review:

Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly “senseless.” By the early 1930s, the Nazi party had hundreds of thousands of devoted members and repeatedly attracted a third of the votes in German elections; its political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the “unification of all Germans,” a demand for “land and territory for the sustenance of our people,” and an assertion that “no Jew can be a member of the race.” Suffice it to say, many sensible Germans were persuaded.

Many sensible Germans were persuaded? Many sensible conservatives might have thought twice before hitting "send,"I should have thought. Can we agree that the sensible Germans were the ones, y'know, who were not persuaded? No? No, it seems; she responds to, in her own words, "[p]undits and non-pundits on both the left and the right [who] have reacted with derision and horror" to her post by asserting that their reaction not only vindicates her point, but is central to it. (Johnson is, at least, aware of all internet traditions)



The House that Buckley Built also is featuring the, er, counterintuitive argument that the Obama Administration's expanding the exemption from providing contraception coverage under the ACA is a greater affront than the narrower exemption. Why? Um, because the insurer-funded, separately paid for plan would be administered by the same insurance companies that provide the employer-provided plan that does not have to provide contraception. For reals. (A more fact-based account of the proposed amended rule is here.)

Elsewhere, the NRA has released an enemies list. As Wonkette astutely notes, you're almost certainly on it. But, hey, you're in good company, along with:

*National organizations of pediatricians;
*nurses;
*doctors;
*teachers;
*cops;
*Jews (B'nai B'rith, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Hadassah, Jewish Labor Committee, etc.);
*Episcopalians;
*Catholics;
*Lutherans;
*Unitarians;
*Vulcans. Ok, Nimoy, but not, strangely enough, for this:



The NRA lists pretty much every celebrity in Hollywood, plus Mike Meyer's wife (his pets are not yet singled out for obloquy, so the NRA's legendary thoroughness seems to be eroding).

What can I say?