Worst. Analogy. Ever.
By Shorter Verbatim Althouse: “The Democrats would love to do the same thing to the Republicans. They wouldn’t hesitate to exploit something that captures the public’s attention and provides leverage for the political arguments they like to make. Remember the Mark Foley incident in 2006.”
Yes, on the one hand we have a political party fomenting opposition to an innocuous religious institution “out of a mixture of geographical ignorance, a slanderous attribution of collective responsibility for 9/11 to all Muslims, and political opportunism.” On the other hand, we had a political party taking advantage of the actual scandalous behavior of a member of Congress of the other party. So, really, the Democrats and Republicans are just the same!
I also like the “captures the public’s attention” formulation. Yes, “the public” suddenly and spontaneously became interested in Manhattan zoning decisions; I’m sure that the bigoted exploitation of what would in a rational world be an utter non-issue by such concerned longtime residents of TriBeCa as Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin had nothing to do with it…
[via]
…relatedly, see also this excellent post from the new, improved Will Saletan.