GOP co-opts 'fascist' leading into elections

It's been a while since Bush started tripping over the term 'Islamo-fascism,' but variants of the word are becoming increasingly common from the White House and Republicans seeking re-election. The irony is staggering coming from the most authoritarian and reactionary manifestation of the Republican party in modern America, but as a professor of government quoted in the article puts it, they "probably had a focus group and they found the word 'fascist.'"

Bush used the term earlier this month in talking about the arrest of suspected terrorists in Britain, and spoke of "Islamic fascists" in a later speech in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Spokesman Tony Snow has used variations on the phrase at White House press briefings.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, in a tough re-election fight, drew parallels on Monday between World War II and the current war against "Islamic fascism," saying they both require fighting a common foe in multiple countries. It's a phrase Santorum has been using for months.

And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday took it a step further in a speech to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, accusing critics of the administration's Iraq and anti-terrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism."

The move by Rumsfeld to go from painting White House critics as anti-American to Nazi sympathizers is the antithesis of what freedom is supposed to mean in this country, a move more in line with the fascism he ostensibly decries and, in a word, disgraceful. But Keith Olbermann delivered an outstanding commentary on this sickening new GOP ploy on his show Countdown, and Crooks and Liars has the video. Check it out.