“But hyperbole from the usual suspects in the entertainment arena of TV and radio is not the whole story. What’s startling is the spillover of this poison into the conservative political establishment. Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan G.O.P. chairman who ran for the party’s national chairmanship this year, seriously suggested in April that Republicans should stop calling Obama a socialist because ‘it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.’ Anuzis pushed ‘fascism’ instead, because ‘everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.’ He didn’t seem to grasp that ‘fascism’ is nonsensical as a description of the Obama administration or that there might be a risk in slurring a president with a word that most find ‘bad’ because it evokes a mass-murderer like Hitler.”
— Frank Rich, “The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers,” NY Times, June 14, 2009.