Jim Geraghty asks why Hillary Clinton finds Bush’s analogy of Osama to Hitler and Lenin “offensive.” I agree that it’s not offensive. But I have one idea why liberals like Clinton think it’s offensive. It’s just a theory mostly gleaned from years of email from netroots types, but the idea that Osama presents a threat akin to Hitler grates on folks who oppose the war on terror (or Bush’s framing of it) because by extension people who disagree are the moral equivalent to people who disagreed that Hitlerism was a threat worthy of national unity. WWII was the good war against the ultimate evil and those who disagreed were the bad guys. Offended liberals reject the idea that they are remotely similar. I can see the point, even if I disagree with it.

As to why they find the Lenin comparison offensive, well, that’s a muddier question, but the same principle probably applies.