Democrats are in full panic mode. Yesterday, TPM led an attack on Jeb Bush for using the word “retard” not to describe Josh Marshall, though that would have been completely legitimate, but in the context of slowing progress. Today they are denouncing Marco Rubio as a closet Nazi or something. What you are about to read is not parody.

In this Republican field, the sad truth is often stranger than the wildest fiction.

Today, as the sun is setting for Yom Kippur – the Jewish Day of Atonement and the most holy day on the Jewish calendar – [mc_name name=’Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’R000595′ ] will hold a fundraiser in a home that features two paintings by Adolf Hitler, a signed copy of Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, and a cabinet full of place settings and linens used by the Nazi leader.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

“An event at a home with items like these is appalling at any time of the year. Adding insult to injury, Rubio is holding this event on the eve of the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. Holding an event in a house featuring the artwork and signed autobiography of a man who dedicated his life to extinguishing the Jewish people is the height of insensitivity and indifference. There’s really no excuse for such a gross act of disrespect. Mr. Rubio, who by the way, represents a sizable Jewish population in our home state of Florida, should cancel this tasteless fundraiser. It is astounding that the presence of these items that represent horror for millions of Jews the world over, would not stop Mr. Rubio or anyone on his team in their tracks when planning this event.” – DNC Chairwoman [mc_name name=’Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’W000797′ ]

Harlan Crow is a very wealthy man. He is a founding member of the Club for Growth and sits on the board of American Enterprise Institute. He is also a collector of art and memorabilia.

To be sure, the library wing added to the 1917 house nine years ago is jaw-dropping. Floor-to-ceiling stacks of books — two levels of gleaming, dark cabinetry filled with rare titles — surround a visitor. Sumptuous oriental rugs cover the floors of the library’s rooms as well as the public rooms of the family residence.

Protected in cabinets, documents’ signatures read Ponce de Leon, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, George Washington, Robert E. Lee and all the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Paintings on the walls bear the surnames of some of art history’s masters, including Peale, Renoir and Monet, as well as the likes of Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler and Dwight Eisenhower. All told, 8,500 books and manuscripts are housed here.

…

Crow, a very wealthy man, has taken hits for this collection. It is not an art collection, he explains, but a historical nod to the facts of man’s inhumanity to man. To men, and a few women, whom democratic societies — if they know the history of the 20th century — call evil personified.

But back up. Near the house are several works that Crow considers monuments to human achievement. Lady Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s only female prime minister, stands larger than life outside a window. Across from her is a large, square sculpture of Churchill, peering over a bank of azaleas. His likeness bears a hint of a smile, as if he were playing hide-and-seek.

These are two people Crow immensely admires. They, therefore, have special spots near the house. The others, the evildoers, are below the house’s sight lines, standing in wait to impart their raft of grim history lessons.

“Most of the statues are Communists,” Crow says. The Dallas native acquired the relics one by one as politics in Europe and Asia changed. When a dictator and his henchmen fell out of favor, the next ruler — or the people — symbolically toppled their likenesses in city squares and outside government buildings.

Here is Vladimir Lenin, to the left. The immense figure, as tall as some of the trees along Turtle Creek, stands staring into the distance, his heavy overcoat falling in folds at his side. The white streaks on the coat are not pigeon droppings, Crow says, but the remains of paint hurled on the bronze by Russians who hated him and his politics.

Stalin is here, to the right. He bears wounds where protesters tried to knock him over or smash him into pieces. Another has red paint on his hands. The statue of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed with his wife, Elena, was covered with human feces when Crow’s representative bought it for the collection.

You also will find Josip Broz Tito, a Yugoslav dictator; Hosni Mubarak of Egypt; Walter Ulbricht, responsible for the Berlin Wall; and Bela Kun, a Hungarian revolutionary.

Gavrilo Princip, the assassin who set off World War I, came from a museum honoring Serbian heroes. To get him out of the country, the truck had to cross the Croatian border. Because there is such hatred between the two countries, Crow says, the border guards would have smashed it.

The figure was sawed into quarters with a handsaw and covered with concrete so the pieces looked like rubble. In the United States, the concrete was removed and the monument restored.

There’s also a monument to the Crisis of October, better known in the U.S. as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a piece honoring Che Guevara.

“You see all these kids wearing Che T-shirts,” Crow says. “I don’t think they know who he is. He is a killer, a murderer.”

This sounds as sinister as all get out, doesn’t it.

Now, if Harlan Crow was shelling out millions to Democrats you wouldn’t hear a peep out of Wasserman Schultz but because his politics are pro-America, unlike her party’s, she makes a dishonest attack. (One can’t help but notice that Wasserman Schultz, who is said to be Jewish, spent the day prior to this Holy Day which she is claiming is besmirched sending out scurrilous emails instead of focusing on asking for forgiveness, etc.) But it is part of a pattern by clowns like Wasserman Schultz to libel private citizens because they don’t like their politics.

Back in 2012, Politico did something similar when Mitt Romney went to a fundraiser at Crow’s home a twit named Alexander Burns (who now works at the NY Times @alexNYTburns)  posted Springtime for Hitler(‘s paintings)

One of the lessons we’ve learned over and over in this campaign is that very rich people — or at least, the very rich people who dabble in politics — are also often pretty odd. In that vein, Wayne Slater profiles Harlan Crow, the man Mitt Romney’s raising money with today:

The prompted David Frum to rise to his defense:

Politico ran a nasty little item yesterday suggesting that Dallas businessman Harlan Crow is some kind of oddball or neo-Nazi because he owns two paintings by Adolf Hitler.

I’ve had the privilege of visiting Harlan Crow’s collection of historical artifacts. This vast assembly of books and documents mostly emphasizes Americana of great rarity and value, including handwritten letters by Abraham Lincoln. The Crow collection is professionally curated, beautifully displayed, and will (I have little doubt) someday form a great public amenity, much like the Morgan Library.

To suggest that Crow somehow endorses Nazism because he has juxtaposed paintings by Churchill, Eisenhower, and Hitler is not to understand what collectors do or why collections exist. Great collections preserve and display the physical record of the past, and that record includes much evil. To record is not to endorse. You’d think that would be obvious, but apparently not.

Mostly this has been mocked as it rightfully should. But some leftwing media have jumped on it, because that is what they do. The “diversity” and “civil rights” “writer” at International Business Times, some guy named Aaron Morrison (@aaronlmorrison) has something dictated to him by some low level Democrat apparatchik titled Marco Rubio’s Hitler Problem: 2016 Candidate Blasted For Yom Kippur-Time Fundraiser At Home With Nazi Memorabilia.

Wasserman Schultz’s pre-Yom Kippur slander is both noxious and ridiculous, much like the Wasserman Schultz. Marco Rubio and Harlan Crow are no more bound to observe Yom Kippur than Debbie Wasserman Schultz would be expected to observe Christmas (minus the movie and Chinese food) and Easter. It is difficult to see how having Hitler memorabilia in a collection devoted to reminding us of “evil personified” is inappropriate, especially on Yom Kippur. And, quite honestly, if Mr. Crow’s collection included stuff that is inappropriate for Yom Kippur, it would be inappropriate at all times.

This amateurish and juvenile flailing about indicates nothing more than the dire straits the Democrats find themselves in.