Unhinged on the right

By Ruth Marcus
WashPost
Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The campaign video is such a transparent ploy, the temptation is to ignore it. After all, Tea Party candidate Rick Barber is a long shot in his July runoff race for the Republican nomination for an Alabama congressional seat.

But then you hit replay, and see again the iconic images, you think you must have imagined. They last a fraction of a second, but they are so imprinted on the modern brain that is all it takes to recognize the photographs. Arbeit Macht Frei, spelled out in cold metal on the concentration camp gates. And the skeletal survivors, packed naked in bunks four tiers high.

And now these images appear in a campaign video in which Barber inveighs against the evils of taxation and has an imaginary conversation with Abe Lincoln.

"Hey Abe, if someone's forced to work for months to pay taxes so a total stranger can get a free meal, medical procedure or a bailout, what's that called? What's it called when one man is forced to work for another?" Extreme close-up of Lincoln impersonator, who solemnly intones: "Slavery."

(More here.)