Rep. Peter Hoekstra tweets that "Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House." Spencer Ackerman dryly asks whether Hoekstra has ever been "beaten up by Nancy Pelosi's militia."
As Spencer points out, Rep. John Culberson also believes that Republicans being the minority party is analogous to the repression of Iran's reform movement, tweeting: "Oppressed minorities includeHouseRepubs: We are using social media to expose repression such as last night’s D clampdown shutting off amends."
The obvious historical parallels between a protest movement in an Islamic theocracy and the Republican Party's minority status aside, there are other germane examples that can be used to explain the constant and debilitating oppression of Republicans. As Rush Limbaugh noted a while ago, the historical oppression of African Americans in the United States provides another apt comparison. Limbaugh said, "The Republican Party is today's oppressed minority. It knows how to behave as one. It shuts up. It doesn't cross bridges, it doesn't run into the Bull Connors of the Democrat Party. It is afraid of the firehouses and the dogs, it's compliant."
It's hard to be both the party of personal responsibility and the party of confusing not getting your way with systemic and brutal oppression. But the GOP manages. Obviously, a bill offering substantial financial reparations for years of brutal repression is in order. I haven't seen tyranny and injustice like this since I was eight and my parents wouldn't let me stay up past my bedtime.
All snark aside, the GOP's narcissistic comparisons of their minority status in Congress to what protestors in Iran are facing doesn't imply admiration or reverence for the reformers; it implies contempt.
-- A. Serwer
