Frightening

I find Rick Santorum genuinely frightening. This Dana Milbank column properly takes Santorum to task for comparing his political opponents to Nazis. I parted company with Milbank only at the very end:

In his unsuccessful 2006 [Senate re-election] campaign, he [i.e. Santorum] often invoked Churchill’s “gathering storm” phrase and compared Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler. He also called for more active use of the term “Islamic fascism.” Last year, Santorum warned that if the Muslim Brotherhood prevails in Egyptian elections, it would be like the Nazis winning in 1933: “That was the last democratic election.”

When used on Ahmadinejad or the Muslim Brotherhood, the Nazi talk is provocative, but defensible. When used on an American president and a rival political party, it shows an alarming lack of perspective.

Milbank is too generous to Santorum here: his "Nazi talk" is not defensible, period. Comparing the Egyptian party that won the most votes in the recent parliamentary elections to the Nazis is ridiculous.