Virginia Republican compares abortion to Holocaust, Democrats whine, GOP likely to hide under desks

As abortion apologists celebrated Roe v. Wade’s 40th anniversary with Orwellian odes to “choice” and creepily cavalier videos, pro-lifers mark the occasion in a more grave fashion. Virginia Republican State Senator Dick Black took to the Senate floor and forcefully condemned the past four decades’ worth of massacre:

When I hear discussions about this, I hear very mild comments about choice and reproductive rights and things of this sort. But I recall back to the days of Nazi Germany, there was a place called Auschwitz. And over the gates of Auschwitz was a sign, and the sign said “arbeit macht frei,” which means roughly “your labors will make you free.” People who went behind those doors never returned. Their labors didn’t make them free. And I’m reminded that we refer to our clinics as “women’s health clinics” and we talk about women’s reproductive rights and so forth. And somehow in all of our discussion, we forget the fact that in each of these decisions lies the life of a little boy or a little girl. You know it’s quite easy –and from where we look back on history, we say “Why didn’t the Germans do something? Why didn’t they rise up? Why didn’t they take action?” But they were helpless before their government just as we are helpless before our government.

Naturally, the state’s reigning left-winger was terribly hurt:

Virginia Democratic Party Chair and State Del. Charniele Herring (D-Alexandria) released a statement on Tuesday, blasting Black’s words as “outrageous and offensive to those who perished in one of the darkest periods of human history.”

Herring called on the senator to apologize for his remarks and for Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) to condemn the senator’s statement, adding that “[c]omparing such a tragedy to women exercising their constitutionally protected rights is appalling.”

In truth, one part of Black’s analogy was wrong—we in the United States are not “helpless before our government” in at all the same way or to nearly the same degree that Germans were under the Third Reich—but the rest was entirely appropriate.

The Nazi Holocaust was mass killing done by the German government; the abortion holocaust is mass killing done with the approval of our government. They have in common needless death, unspeakable cruelty, foundations of lies, and the total betrayal of a decent society’s most basic obligations.

Black has nothing to apologize for. If anything here is “appalling,” “outrageous[,] and offensive,” it’s the willingness of Herring and her allies to perpetuate a killing spree that has dwarfed the Holocaust.

It’s not unusual for pro-life politicians to describe abortion in ways that make pro-aborts cry, but unfortunately, such instances rarely seem to do much more than fill headlines and give abortion fans and foes something to argue about for a while before the pundits’ and lawmakers’ attention turns toward something else.

Why? Because Republicans are notoriously bad at the follow-through. The next few days will tell, but we can probably expect Black to at most defend his statements when pressed, but not do much more to turn the tables on his critics for not recognizing abortion as a holocaust. His GOP colleagues will follow suit. And the state party? Instead of a impassioned defense of their man and his stance, they’re probably praying right now that the whole thing blows over by morning.

However closer public opinion is to us than the media wants you to think, the fact remains that it’s nowhere near where it should be, and a big part of the reason is because the Democrats are always on offense, and Republicans’ instinctive response is usually to change the subject rather than fight to win. The phrase is so common as to border on cliché, but in politics, it’s true: the best defense is a good offense. When will Republicans learn?