The American Debate: No, (fill in the blank) is not like the Nazis

Enough already with the Nazi analogies.

Invoking Adolf has been a noxious habit these last 10 years, a symptom of our debased political culture, and today the tactic seems more popular than ever. On the left and the right, Nazism is grist for the rhetorical mill. Politicians and commentators, to score points in the news cycle, continue to commit unspeakable acts of historical disproportion.

A few years back, for instance, Democratic Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen complained that the Republicans were lying about President Obama's health-care reform - "a big lie, just like Goebbels." But Richard Land, a Baptist leader, saw things differently. He said Obama's health-care reform "is precisely what the Nazis did." Elsewhere, Hollywood director Rob Reiner said that the tea party was "selling fear and anger, and that's what Hitler sold." But Fox News chairman Roger Ailes had a different target. He said that the people who run National Public Radio "are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude."

This rote hyperbole, this disrespect for the genocidal victims of Nazism, has been common since the early George W. Bush era - Republican Sen. Phil Gramm said in 2002 that a Democratic tax plan was "right out of Nazi Germany" - but at least there was an upside. There was no talk of Nazis among our presidential candidates. The knee-jerk smears were confined to the lower strata.

Until now.

I'm referring, of course, to the rhetorically challenged Rick Santorum. What follows are verbatim remarks that the surging candidate uttered last weekend. You may need to read it twice, because Santorum tends to ramble through the English language like bison trampling amber waves of grain. He was arguing that Americans need to be vigilant about Obama: