Gingrich backtracks on Obama-Nazi comparison

It's always fun to have Newt Gingrich on the national stage. As Amanda Terkel of Think Progress explains:

In his new book To Save America, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich repeatedly argues that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats make up a “secular-socialist machine” that “represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.” Since the book has come out, Gingrich has doubled down on this rhetoric, going on NBC and saying that the Obama administration is as much of a “threat” to America as brutal dictators like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were.

Not surprisingly, criticism has poured in from across the political spectrum. Gingrich sent a letter to Anti-Defamation League National Director Abe Foxman:

As I told you on the phone, I recognize the horror and the evil of the Nazi regime and nothing in my new book To Save America should be interpreted as a statement of moral equivalence between totalitarian regimes and the secular-socialist left.

It's nice that he's aware of history, and it's nice that he doesn't want people to misconstrue his comparison as moral equivalence. Which makes one wonder what sort of equivalence he did intend, when calling President Obama and the Democrats as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany once was.

Gingrich is said to be considering running for president, in 2012. Let's hope he does. His presence would elevate the level of discourse in the Republican primaries.