HOW DARE YOU USE THE HITLER ANALOGY IF YOU'RE NOT REPUBLICAN?

Surprisingly, with all the flack from the right about Sen. Robert Byrd's (D-WV) remarks comparing the Republicans' threatened end to the filibuster to Hitler, it's Wonkette who quotes prominent Repugs' own past Hitler/Nazi comparison quotes. According to Ken Mehlman, the Anti-Defamation League, and wingnut radio, "Senator Byrd's invocation of Hitler's Germany ... is reprehensible and beyond the pale."

You may have heard the rumblings from the right about Senator Robert Byrd's not-that-helpful historical analogy vis-a-vis the Senate Republicans' threat to disallow filibusters and, uhm, Hitler. Byrd, who is old and scary, said that "Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

You can tell he's old because he still thinks "Hitler" accusations are "cool" or "with it." They are so last year. Last administration, even!

For example (from the Congressional Record):
 
"Now, forgive me, but that is right out of Nazi Germany. I don't understand...why all of a sudden we are passing laws that sound as if they are right out of Nazi Germany."
-Sen. Gramm, R-TX, September 5, 2002 (speaking in opposition to a Democratic tax plan)
 
"That, Mr. Speaker, is a modern-day equivalent of the Nazi prison guard saying 'I was just following orders.' It was all legal in Nazi Germany at the time."
-Rep. King, R-IA, September 8, 2004 (speaking in opposition to a legal ruling on abortion)

"We certainly have all seen the rejections of Nazi Germany's abuses of science. As a society and a nation, there ought to be some limit on what we can allow or should allow."
-Sen. Sessions R-AL, October 11, 2004 (speaking in opposition to stem cell research)

"He also said that imposition of the Kyoto Protocol 'would deal a powerful blow on the whole humanity similar to the one humanity experienced when Nazism and communism flourished.'  And that was the chief economic advisor to Russian President Putin. The world has certainly turned on its head that we Americans must look to Russians for speaking out strongly against irrational authoritarian ideologies."
-Sen. Inhofe, R-OK, October 11, 2004 (speaking in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol)

In other word, IOIYAR (it's okay if you're a Republican).