Texas Republican Congressman Randy Weber came under withering criticism last night after he posted a tweet comparing President Obama with Adolf Hitler. The occasion for such an incendiary comparison? Unlike Obama, who did not attend an anti-terror solidarity rally in Paris this weekend, Hitler did think it "important" to get to the city, Weber wrote, in a reference to Germany's 1940 occupation of Paris:
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Conservatives may spend a great deal of time asserting that Obama is a dirty socialist, but Weber, a Tea Partyer elected to succeed longtime Texas Rep. Ron Paul in 2012, is but the latest conservative to link Obama with the fascist dictator. Here are six others.
Louie Gohmert
In a 2010 House floor speech, America's favorite bumbling conservative, who has represented an east Texas-based congressional district since 2005 but failed spectacularly in his bid to become House Speaker this month, approvingly cited conservative polemicist Thomas Sowell's comparison of Nazi Germany with America in the Obama era.
"There’s a brilliant man named Thomas Sowell," Gohmert said. "And I didn’t vote for Barack Obama in 2008, but I sure would have voted for Thomas Sowell. This man, well, his article says quite a lot. His editorial says here — and it’s just been posted this week — but it says, “When Adolph Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920’s” — and I’m quoting from Thomas Sowell in his editorial: ‘leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics."
"'Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler’s rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. ‘Useful idiots’ was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union,'" Gohmert continued, reading from Sowell's op-ed.
"And this isn’t in the article," Gohmert concluded, "this is my comment — but we do have useful idiots today, who are heard to say, ‘Wow, what we really need is for the president to be a dictator for a little while.’ They know not what they say."
Paul Broun
Before Obama even took the oath of office, then-Georgia Congressman Paul Broun warned in November 2008 that the president-elect could usher in a "radical" dictatorship.
"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Broun said, referring to an Obama proposal for a civilian force to aid the military. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may– may not, I hope not - but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."
"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun continued. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany."
The congressman hastened to add, "I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential." Got it.
Glenn Beck
Criticizing the new administration's economic policies, carnival barker Glenn Beck told Laura Ingraham on Fox News in February 2009, "We are really truly stepping beyond socialism and starting to look at fascism." Beck proceeded to "explain what happened in Nazi Germany," asserting that talk of nationalizing troubled banks amounted to "national socialism."
"At first, all the big companies and the big capitalists in Germany said, 'Oh, thank goodness there's a savior. OK, great, we'll do that. Yes.' It didn't take too long before, like here in America now -- Goldman Sachs -- they started to see the writing on the wall and ... they couldn't get out of it fast enough," the noted historian said.
Rick Santorum
During his 2012 presidential run, the former Pennsylvania senator compared the coming campaign against Obama to the military buildup during the Second World War.
"We're a hopeful people," Santorum told an audience in Georgia "We think, 'Well, you know it'll get better. Yeah, he's a nice guy. I mean, it won't be near as bad as what we think. This will be okay.' I mean, yeah, maybe he's not the best guy after a while, after a while you find out some things about this guy over in Europe who's not so good of a guy after all. You know what, why do we need to be involved?" Santorum said. He then called on Americans to be involved the same way the way in the struggle against Hitler.
After his remarks drew criticism, Santorum insisted that he wasn't comparing the president to Hitler.
Milton Wolf
A distant cousin of President Obama who mounted an ultimately unsuccessful primary challenge to Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts last year, Wolf likened Obama's attitude toward "successful Americans" to Hitler's policies toward "Jews & gypsies" in a since-deleted 2012 tweet.
"Scapegoats of history: Hitler - Jews & gypsies. Mussolini - Jews & Bolsheviks.#Obama - Successful Americans. #tcot #p2 #gop," Wolf wrote.
Drudge Report
As President Obama weighed his options for executive action on gun safety reforms in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Matt Drudge's namesake news aggregator seized on the story to compare Obama with both Hitler and his World War II nemesis, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin:
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