In their continual onslaught to delegitimize the President, his administration, and his policies conservatives pundits from Rush Limbaugh to members of the Republican caucus have turned the Anti-Obama rhetoric up to critical. No longer content with calling the President of the United States a racist, "reverse-racist", socialist, or an "community-organizer" conservative pundits have jumped to the next best thing to rally their troops: calling Barack Obama a Nazi.

We saw a preview of this towards the end of the 2008 campaign at McCain and Palin rallies; however, now the Nazi rhetoric has come back in full force to attack the President's agenda at Democratic congressmen's town hall meeting during the August recess. 

It is being stoked by folks like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, who are the de facto poster boys for the new fringe conservative movement, that is chasing away moderates at an alarming rate and shows no sign of stopping. 

In 1990 Mike Godwin coined what is commonly referred to as Godwin's Law, which states, "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." While initially developed to describe what Godwin had observed on the Internet, social conservatives have made it clear that Godwin's Law applies both online and offline.

The folks at Stuff White People Like also weighed in on this classic political tactic, 

Comparing people to Hitler is an easy way for white people to get a strong point across to the less enlightened, or the insufficiently white. Everyone knows who Adolf Hitler was. And everyone knows that Hitler was very, very bad. Therefore, if a white person really, REALLY, doesn't like something or someone, he or she may angrily say something to the effect of, "This is exactly the same kind of thing that Hitler used to do!" accompanied by varying levels of profanity based on blood-alcohol content. No matter what your gut reaction may be at that point, do not disagree with that white person. Otherwise, well, you love Hitler.

(Read the complete entry here)

There is no doubt that playing "the Nazi card" provokes some response from observers, and in a starved for ratings news media news is always good news, no matter how incoherent the comparison. 

While Glenn Beck has been beating the drums of "Fascism is here" for a while, it is his ideological predecessor Rush Limbaugh who takes home the gold for stirring up the radical fringe of conservative movement with his speech to his followers this week on the apparent--though only his followers seem to think so--connections between President Obama and Adolf Hitler. 

Needless to say, it is a nonsensical comparison, one which even those that like to believe that the Masonic Order is behind everything we do would have trouble believing. The most laughable thing about the rhetoric so far is that in comparison to what progressives and liberal Democrats have been advocating for throughout the years the proposals on the table are more aligned to something Milton Freedman would propose as opposed to Che Guevara. 

This rhetoric which is being herald by some as the "average middle-class person standing up for freedom" is an obstruction to civil discourse, and does not at all advance the discussion of health care reform, regardless of anyone's ideological position. Which explains why it is being propped up by insurance companies and lobbying groups that enjoy, in fact thrive, in the current system and want to maintain the status quo. 

To a certain extent I pity those working/middle-class voters that interrupt town hall meetings and force their children to hold up signs that say "No to Fascism, No to Obama." As they stand their shouting the insurance companies continue to roll hundreds of American families off their plans in an effort to make more money, while American families continue to struggle through an economic recession generations in the making. Who will they yell at when finally pushed by the forces of the free market, their insurance company decides to no longer cover them? Will they blame the government for not being there when they needed it most, and will their icons like Limbaugh forget about them and move onto the next issue to boost his ratings?

This entry is cross-posted from Clips N' Chips