Flashback: Santorum Compared Democratic Effort To Block Pro-Enron Judge To Adolf Hitler

In 2005, President Bush nominated Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen to a federal appellate judgeship. Senate Democrats eventually staged a failed filibuster effort driven in large part because of concerns that Owen is ethically unsuited to the federal bench. As a Texas justice, Owen took thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions from Enron and then wrote a key opinion reducing Enron’s taxes by $15 million.

As BuzzFeed points out, however, Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) had quite an odd reaction to this effort to keep Enron’s friend off the federal courts, which he expressed in a speech given back when Republicans falsely claiming that no one had ever filibustered a judge for the first two centuries of the Republic:

I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is how we confirm judges — broken by the other side two year ago. And the audacity of some members to stand up and say “how dare you break this rule!” It’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying “I’m in Paris, how dare you invade me? How dare you bomb my city?” This is no more the rule of the Senate than it was the rule of the Senate before not to filibuster.

Watch it:

To the extent that Republicans ever actually believed that there is something wrong with filibustering, they sure abandoned that belief fast the second they found themselves in the minority. Without a doubt, the obstructionist era of Mitch McConnell proves that there are strong arguments to be made against filibusters in general and judicial filibusters in particular.

But blocking a confirmation vote is absolutely nothing like Hitler.