No death penalty for Hitler

I haven't really been paying any attention to the gubernatorial race in Virginia, but this article in this morning's Washington Post Metro section woke me up.

Jerry Kilgore, the Republican, is running an ad (in two versions) in which the father of a murder victim complains that Tim Kaine, the Democrat, "voluntarily represented" the murderer and is against the death penalty, "no matter how heinous the crime." The ad is here.

This ad has now been attacked by some self-styled spokesmen for the Jews, because the father says that Kaine thinks that even Hitler didn't deserve the death penalty.

"Such references [to Hitler] are inappropriate and insensitive, and, as part of a discussion of the death penalty in the Commonwealth of Virginia, trivialize the horrors of the Holocaust," wrote David Friedman, a regional director for the group.

* * *The ADL reaction was echoed by other Jewish leaders in a conference call Friday organized by the Kaine campaign. Rabbi Jack Moline of Alexandria and Tommy Baer, the former president of B'nai B'rith, demanded that Kilgore apologize and withdraw the ad.

"I find it demeaning and morally repugnant. It trivializes the entire period of the Holocaust," Baer told reporters.

Moline, whose daughter is a paid staff member for the Kaine campaign, called it "blasphemy" and said Kilgore owes "an apology to the Jewish people."

For readers who are too dim to fathom what this is about, the Post adds:

Holocaust references have become almost off-limits in American politics as Jewish leaders have begun to pounce on what they say are cynical attempts to capitalize on the emotional power of the genocide.

Here are the examples:

U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) was chastised for accusing Senate Republicans of acting like Nazis. Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan was taken to task for comparing the Terri Schiavo case to the killings at Auschwitz. And in Virginia, state Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) was reprimanded for comparing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to the Holocaust.

See if you can figure out the difference. In these examples, a politician compared something to the Holocaust or Nazis and trivialized the horrors. This ad doesn't compare Kaine to Hitler; it says Kaine is so adamantly against capital punishment that he doesn't think Hitler is bad enough to deserve it.

What I want to know is where these "leaders" have been for the past several years, when the Left has been equating Bush with Hitler? Where were they during the anti-war rally in Washington last month, when this was not an unusual sign?

I wish these people speaking for Jews would stop embarrassing the rest of us in public.