California Democratic chair compared GOPs to Nazi Joseph Goebbels
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The chairman of the California Democratic Party likened Republicans to a Nazi propagandist Monday morning.
“They lie and they don’t care if people think they lie … Joseph Goebbels – it’s the big lie, you keep repeating it,” John Burton told reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle and CBS News before a delegation breakfast.
He said GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan told “a bold-faced lie and he doesn’t care that it was a lie. That was Goebbels, the big lie.”
Goebbels was the Nazis’ minister of propaganda. California Gov. Jerry Brown got in trouble in 2010 for comparing his GOP opponent Meg Whitman to Goebbels.
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Mitt Romney’s campaign pounced on Burton’s remark, calling on President Obama, DNC Chairman Antonio Villaraigosa and Brown to repudiate it.
A spokesman for Obama said the statement does not reflect the views of the campaign.
“That doesn’t have any place in the political discourse here in Charlotte,” Ben LaBolt said, when asked about the matter by reporters Monday morning. He didn’t answer when a reporter asked if the Obama campaign would ask Burton to step down.
Burton, the longtime leader of California Democrats, is known for his spontaneous, often profanity-laced pronouncements.
-- Seema Mehta and Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times