One of the more amusing criticisms of my book has been to deny,deny, deny that liberals really use ad hitlerum arguments against conservatives. Serious liberals don’t countenance such things, chin strokers like Michael Tomasky insist. Indeed, he dismisses liberals who employ such arguments are “dopey.” The problem with this pose is that it is at best ignorant and more legitimately plain deceitful. As I document in the book, the leading lights of liberalism have been hurling the f-word rightward for 70 years. In fact, it might be the case that I can name more liberals who’ve cried fascism at the Right at one point or another than I can name liberals who haven’t.

Unsurprisingly that list is getting longer every day. One definition of fascism might be onomatopoetic: “fascist!” is simply the sound liberals make when they stub their toes on the hard corner of reality.

I’m not looking for this stuff, people send it to me. But so far there the usual silliness from people I’ve never heard of at Salon and the Huffington Post. And there’s the usual hackery from people like Florida Congressman Robert Wexler who called Palin a Nazi sympathizer because she was polite to Pat Buchanan. Of course, it’s not surprising that a guy like Wexler would have a hard time telling Nazism and politeness apart.

Madonna recently visually compared McCain to Hitler at some concert. Or something like that. There’s this headline over at Rolling Stone: Rage Against the Machine Ask Fans to Fight “Fascist Republican Agenda” at Fierce Minneapolis Gig.

Now, I’m perfectly open to the argument that these people are dopes (I didn’t even mention renowned historians DL Hughley and Jesse Ventura). But Josh Marshall’s not supposed to be a dope. He said of the Giuliani speech:

With Rudy’s speech, to riff on the brilliance of the immortal Molly Ivins, I think I preferred this speech in the original German.
On a more serious note, I think it will eventually be clear to people that the Republicans made a major mistake putting Rudy in prime time. Given the state of the campaign, they have to take the fight to Obama. But you need to choose the right person. Rudy comes across as curdled and angry. Great for rousing diehards. But I don’t see this speech working with undecideds.
10:27 PM … What’s weird is that Rudy seems to get genuinely angrier the longer the speech goes on.
I will admit he’s got the Joseph Goebbels hand gestures down pat.

The list will get a lot, lot longer before November.