DeMint seems to be the first senator, who lowers the debate about Obama's reforms to the level of right-wing talk radio shock jocks and bloggers, who have been talking talking about "pre-WWII Germany," writes Steve Benen in the Washington Monthly's blog.

Are these just the statements of a few nut cases? Or is there more to it? Should we take their thinking serious? I think we have to, because many conservative Americans seem to be paranoid about social democracy, and they understand history much different than most folks in Europe do. Many are not crazy or stupid or lack general education, but they draw different lessons from history. This is a serious and fascinating transatlantic difference.

Apparently, as Michael Stickings writes in The Moderate Voice, "the Obama-is-a-socialist and socialism-is-fascism (and hence Obama-is-a-fascist) memes are big on the right, and DeMint was obviously riffing off that ridiculous connection. But what I think he was saying - or, at least, it's how it reads to me - is that social democracy is a precursor to fascism, just as Nazi Germany replaced Weimar Germany. In this sense, Obama isn't a Nazi but a pre-Nazi - or something like that."

Ed Kilgore explains in The New Republic's blog, that DeMint

was echoing, consciously or unconsciously, the popular right-wing nostrum  that the "chaos" of [Weimar Germany's] regime's "decadent parliamentary democracy" made the advent of the Third Reich inevitable if not actually salutary. That would comport with DeMint's iron conviction that "social democracies" produce "tyranny" by seducing people into dependence on government and then encouraging them to loot their wealthy and virtuous neighbors. And it would also fit in nicely with DeMint's Jesse-Helms-style enthusiasm for right-wing coups in Latin America. After all, what's a little fascism-of the illiberal kind, at least-compared to the horror of progressive taxes or universal health care.

Yglesias is reading a lot into DeMint's statement and made this exaggeration: "DeMint Confuses Nazis and Social Democrats; Also Calls Obama a Nazi" Ah, it's all politics! Every stupid statement of your opponents can be used for politics.

Last week, I wrote about Another Crazy Bush-Hitler Comparison. But this one is even worse: Joyce E. Thomann, president of the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County, wrote, according to the Baltimore Sun, in a letter on the group's homepage that "Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common in my view. Obama and Hitler use the 'blitzkrieg' method to overwhelm their enemies." Yes, of course, but Hitler didn't use a teleprompter.

BTW, did DeMint imply that Iran is some "place" in South America? Ah, so maybe it is a lack of education after all.