Washington Post columnist: Santorum ‘sees Nazis everywhere’

He’s hardly the only politician to compare enemies to the Nazis, but Rick Santorum may do it more often — and with less justification — than most.

That’s the argument put forward today by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who criticizes the GOP presidential candidate for his “tendency to go from zero to Nazi over ordinary political disagreements.”

“Rick Santorum sees Nazis everywhere: in the Middle East, in doctor’s offices and medical labs, in the Democratic Party, and now in the White House,” Milbank writes. He notes that among other targets, Santorum made the claim against Bob Casey before the Democrat obliterated his 2006 bid for re-election to the Senate. (“The country somehow did not fall to the brownshirts,” Milbank adds wryly.)

Santorum has upped the ante during his bid for the White House, recently implying that President Obama represents a 21st century Hitler, an analogy he later (implausibly) denied making. Milbank takes Santorum to task for his lack of perspective, and for effectively trivializing the Nazis by talking about them so casually.

The columnist notes that Santorum used his Senate tenure to battle anti-Semitism, and says that some Nazi comparisons — such as to Iran’s president and the Muslim Brotherhood — are “provocative, but defensible.”

But, he concludes, “when used on an American president and a rival political party, it shows an alarming lack of perspective.”