Ohio’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray likened Republicans to Nazi sympathizers while speaking in Lima last month, but Sherrod Brown (who will appear on the ballot alongside Cordray in November) has yet to speak out against Cordray’s hateful tirade.
Cordray’s outlandish remarks add to the abhorrent rhetoric of other national Democrats this week. Just yesterday, Maxine Waters called for an uprising against President Trump’s administration, going as far as to encourage the “resistance” base to harass and confront administration officials in public.
Sherrod Brown thus far has refused to condemn Rep. Waters’ outburst, but will he stand by as his fellow Ohio Democrat likens Republicans to Nazis? As Ohio’s highest-ranking Democrat, voters deserve to know where Brown stands.
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PX column: Why did Richard Cordray link some Ohio Republicans to Nazi collaborators?
Cincinnati Enquirer – Politics Extra
Jason Williams
June 26, 2018 – 8:28 AM
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics-extra/2018/06/25/ohio-governors-race-dem-richard-cordray-makes-bizarre-nazi-reference/730717002/
In the age of Donald Trump, Nazi references are way out of control in American political discourse.
How out of hand? Even some of the wonky, nice guys in politics are making them.
But that doesn’t excuse Democratic Ohio gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray, who made a bizarre comment likening some Republicans to Nazi collaborators while speaking in Lima before last month’s primary.
WHAT HE SAID: Working together to solve problems has not been the “philosophy” of Republican Gov. John Kasich and statehouse Republicans, Cordray said, according to a video clip of the speech obtained by Politics Extra. Cordray questions why locally elected Republicans across the state aren’t “speaking up about this.”
Cordray then added: “Somebody said to me last month that they’re ‘Vichy Republicans,’ which I didn’t fully understand. I guess that’s ‘Vichy France’ during World War II, the ones who went over and collaborated with the Nazis.”
Standing next to a decorative wreath hanging on a wall, Cordray raised both hands as he said “Vichy Republicans.” A few people in the audience could be heard chuckling.
WTH? The context wasn’t entirely clear in the 45-second video from Cordray’s speech to the Allen County Democratic Party Women’s Club on March 8. His campaign did not answer Politics Extra’s questions about what prompted him to make the comments.
But it’s believed Cordray was referring to Gov. Kasich’s 2011 decision to drastically cut the state’s local government fund, which has put a squeeze on counties, towns and townships across the state. If elected, Cordray hopes to restore the local government fund.
The video surfaces at a time when Cordray and Democrats might be gaining momentum ahead of the November midterms. Democrats are hoping to capitalize on a potential Trump resistance in Ohio, and a recent Enquirer/Suffolk University poll showed Cordray leading Republican Mike DeWine in the governor’s race.
CORDRAY RESPONDS: “Rich believes Ohioans deserve elected representatives who will stand up for what’s right, even if that means speaking out against people of their own party,” Mike Gwin, Cordray’s campaign spokesman, told Politics Extra. “He regrets repeating someone else’s inappropriate comparison in making that point.”
Why did Cordray even go there? Nazi analogies never go over well, and Cordray could’ve made his point without such a reference. Call Republicans a bunch of “yellow-bellied cowards” or any related synonyms for not taking a stand.
But it’s unfair and irresponsible to broadly compare Republicans to Nazi collaborators, something some of President Donald Trump’s biggest critics have done too often. It was uncharacteristic of Cordray, a thoughtful policy wonk who’s usually careful with his words and not known for being a verbal bomb thrower.
HISTORY LESSON: Nazi references are nothing new in politics. Democrats have tried to link Republican presidents to Hitler through the years, and the Nazi rhetoric has been turned up since Trump burst onto the political scene.
Many of those references have been made in the context of Trump’s dictatorial tendencies and popularity among white supremacists. Other Nazi references have come in the context of broadly labeling any GOP leader who acquiesces to Trump’s controversial America-first agenda as “Vichy Republicans.”
It’s a label that surfaced during Trump’s campaign. During World War II, “Vichy France“referred to an unoccupied southern area of the country. “Vichy French” government officials kowtowed to the Nazis and helped the Germans conquer France in 1940.
France remained under Nazi control until the British and American forces liberated the French four years later.
Politics Extra is a column looking inside Greater Cincinnati and Ohio politics. Follow Enquirer political columnist Jason Williams on Twitter @jwilliamscincy.