Huckanomics!

[pieces o nine]

LEARN OUR HISTORY

St. Reagan gets even more posthumous accolades from Mike Huckabee's latest capitalist (ad)venture.!

New, From Mike Huckabee!
Give Your Kids An Exciting Way To Learn
The Facts About American History

I saw this  on Rachel Maddow (link to today's show not up yet, it probably will be by the time you're reading this). Here's yet another example of a Repug re-writing history (not mentioning Democratic leadership during some of the featured vignettes and casting Republican ... bloopers ... in a kinder, gentler light). I didn't know much about Mr. Huckabee when he first came on the national scene, but I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. That is, until I saw him earnestly raising his hand as an IDiot during one of the presidential media circuses.

Perhaps he can get elected to the Texas schoolboards re-writing "biased" U.S. history textbooks if the Faux News thing doesn't work out.

Not very taddy of me, but I can't blithely ignore these people.   

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

The scary part is that the huckster is one of the 'moderate' ones.

[Opsa]

Ew! This is so odd. Where are the spoofs on it, I wonder?

[Swatopluk]

Some things are too goofy to get spoofed

[Aggie]

In Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power through a platform of touting German superiority and blaming others for Germany's problems.

*ahem*

Not incorrect, but perhaps this might prompt a little reflection?

Nobody learns no nothing from no history....   

[Swatopluk]

To be nasty that perfectly describes the modern Right in the US too. What else is the 'exceptionalism' that they constantly insist on and attack Obama for not rubbing under each and every foreign and domestic nose. The blame game is not limited to the Right but it is their favorite tool.

Concerning Hitler and the Nazis
They rose when economic disaster struck and destroyed the trust in the established parties. The same factor helped the communists.
That it was Hitler's party and not one of the many others on the Right that profitted from this can to a good deal be attributed to the extreme media savvy. Hitler's media campaigns were simply revolutionary. For example he was the first to use the airplane to quickly move from one event to the next, allowing him to personally attend several rallies per day in different parts of the country (one has to give it to the guy, he had stamina). A less known aspect: the message got tailored to the local audience. In the most Eastern parts of Germany the Nazis campaigned in Polish !!!! They bet and won on the assumption that people would be unable or unwilling to compare notes (sounds familiar, doesn't it?). Once they got beyond a critical mass in parliament (local and 'federal') they essentially joined forces with the comminists to prevent the established parties from achieving anything while at the same time blaming them for being ineffective. Together they had enough votes to 'filibuster' but neither had enough to rule. But they did not have to since the stalemate was to their advantage. In the end the Old Right threw in their lot with the Nazis in the mistaken belief that they could control them and the Centrists (Zentrum = political Catholics) got browbeaten into tolerating the minority government with both threats and promises. The left got crushed and the new majority did away with the democratic process (although there were sham elections to parliament during the 3rd Reich).

I see a lot of similarities in the US but there are still elements that until now have prevented a similar takeover.
The Right has no real charismatic leader that could appeal to the whole spectrum while the democratic (small d) forces have Obama.
The Right has until now managed to overreach each time
The binary political system forces the Right into positions of responsibility before they can finally destroy their opponents. Once they are in office their incompetent/evil behaviour drains their support and faster than they can expand their influence. The Nazis (with the help from the non-democratic Left) could block without blame since they were still a minority. Then they took over in a single strike.
In the states we can see a far more disconcerting development. There are currently several coups from GOP administrations and it is by no means clear that they will fail. My guess is that if Washington (most importantly the White House) was in GOP hands there would be the US equivalent of the Preußenschlag by now. In Michigan a small version is already in place: the governor can now declare fiscal emergency and replace democratically elected local goverments with 'emergency managers' with dictatorial powers.

A major difference I see between the established Right in the US and the Nazis in Germany is that the Nazis were primarily motivated by genuine (if horrible) beliefs, less by being bought subjects of big money. They were financed not by the really big guys but more by medium sized interests (contrary to Communist doctrine). I think that also distinguishes the Nazis from the other fascist movements of the time (or in South America).
Oversimplified:
Nazis: ideology with support from money
Fascism: union of ideology and money
(extrapolated) TP/GOP: money with support fom ideology*
Caveat: the nazis became almost equally corrupt once in power but it was not what drove them into power

*in Michigan one can see the raw form. The declared intentions of the first 'emergency manager' are tailored to personally serve his and the governor's financial interests.