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Democrats favorite character assassination label since FDR has been using the name “Hitler” or “Nazi.”

FDR
…accused Republican candidate Wendell Willkie of using “Hitler tactics” by repeating his slogans frequently.

Hubert Humphrey
“If the British had not fought in 1940, Hitler would have been in London and if Democrats do not fight in 1968, Nixon will be in the White House.”

Governor Pat Brown of California
“Goldwater’s acceptance speech had the stench of fascism. All we needed to hear was Heil Hitler.”

Martin Luther King
“We see danger signs of Hitlerism in the candidacy of Mr. Goldwater.”

George Meany (AFL-CIO)
”I have drawn a parallel between Goldwater and Hitler and I make no apology for drawing that parallel,” (Some of the organizations represented by Meany had aided Hitler when Stalin told them to).

George McGovern
“Except for Adolf Hitler’s extermination of the Jewish people, the American bombardment of defenseless peasants in Indochina is the most barbaric act of modern times.”

Tom Lantos
“If you overlook your involvement in the KKK, or the Nazi party, or the Republican Party, you are lying.” The issue at hand had nothing to do with Nazism. It was about Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture taking bribes. The goal was to associate Republicans with Nazism by classing the two together as frequently as possible regardless of relevance, decency or truth.

William Shirer
called Nixon an “apt pupil” of Hitler, compared Reagan to Hitler for intervening in Grenada and compared Bush I to Hitler for trying to outlaw flag burning.

By the Reagan years, the left had achieved a banality of Hitler analogies. Everything Reagan did was just like Hitler. All of Reagan’s associates were just like Hitler. It was Hitlers all the way down.

Kurt Vonnegut
“The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.” Hitler wasn’t elected, Bush was, but you can’t expect a left-wing loudmouth to know history.

Charles Rangel
“The Iraq War is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed.” (Rangel had also claimed that the Contract with America was worse than Hitler).

Durbin
compared Gitmo to Nazi concentration camps.

John Glenn
compared Republican arguments to Nazi propaganda. “It’s the old Hitler business… if you hear something repeated, repeated, you start to believe it.”

Al Gore
“The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts.”

Keith Ellison (a former Nation of Islam supporter who had defended its anti-Semitism)
compared the September 11 to the Reichstag fire.

Robert Byrd (a former Klansman)
compared efforts to block Democratic filibusters to Nazi Germany.

And so the only thing we can truly be certain of is that any Republican nominee will be Hitler.
Accusations of Nazism remain the default argument for a Democratic Party turned far to the left.

To most people, Nazi analogies summon up images of the Holocaust and a ruthless dictatorship. To the left however, any populist reaction against their rule is Nazism.

Optimists thought that the Democrats had reached “Peak Hitler” under Bush. But for the left there is no Peak Hitler. The same tired line of attack has been trotted out for fifty years.

And so each Republican makes the electoral journey from Hitler to a political moderate whom a latter generation of liberals mourns while complaining that this latest Republican really is Hitler.