Jonah on the GOP primary

Here's a rambling yet fun Goldberg article on the GOP primary. Have to admit I hadn't heard Pataki's remarks about hate crimes.

Oh, and Pataki is also the author of what I have long considered the single dumbest prepared statement in modern political history.

“It is conceivable,” Pataki said in 2000 when he signed a hate-crimes bill into law, “that if this law had been in effect 100 years ago, the greatest hate crime of all, the Holocaust, could have been avoided.”

You could write several Ph. D. dissertations on why that is idiotic. Though I do like the image of Hitler having his hands tied by a hate-crimes law, because, you know, there were no laws against genocidal murder when he came into power. “Meine Herren,” Hitler would have to tell his comrades in the Eagle’s Nest, “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

Sort of puts me in mind of the blame-the-Pope-for-AIDS crowd, only with the added silliness factor of mindless holocaust invocation.