September 25, 2013 12:33 PM UTC

John McCain (R) Calls Godwin on Ted Cruz (R)

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• by: Colorado Pols

NBC News reports from the Senate debate over shutting down the government today, where Texas Sen. Ted Cruz just wrapped up his 21-hour pseudo filibuster:

Arizona Sen. John McCain lit into Ted Cruz's marathon speech against Obamacare shortly after the Texas senator's 21-hour effort came to its conclusion on Wednesday.

[John] McCain, Republicans' 2008 presidential nominee, castigated the effort to use the specter of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare. But more pointedly, McCain sharply criticized Cruz for likening those who oppose defunding Obamacare to Nazi appeasers before World War II.

"I resoundingly reject that allegation. That allegation, in my view, does a great disservice," McCain said on the Senate floor. "I do not agree with that comparison; I think it's wrong."

Cruz had said Tuesday on the Senate floor in reference to those who are skeptical of the effort to undo Obamacare: "I suspect those same pundits who say it can't be done, if it had been in the 1940s we would have been listening to them. Then they would have made television. They would have gotten beyond carrier pigeons and beyond letters and they would have been on tv and they would have been saying, 'You cannot defeat the Germans.'"

It's not the first time Sen. John McCain has called out the excesses, rhetorical or otherwise, of the "Tea Party"-aligned crop of new and newly prominent Republicans in Congress. It's often the case that invoking a universally-regarded evil like the Nazis, in defense against which so many Americans died, clarifies not the point being made by the politician going there–only the ridiculous exaggerations they're willing to make to justify their behavior. However you feel about "Obamacare," there is nothing about it that any reasonable person would compare to Nazi Germany. It's simply absurd.

And seriously, don't go all "Nazi" in front of a combat veteran like John McCain without a very good reason.