What It Is With Leftists and the Goebbels Smear?

Paul Ryan isn't the first Republican to be tarred with the Goebbels brush. Remember when Vanity Fair depicted Dubya advisor Richard Perle--a Jew--as a Goebbels look-alike/act-alike? That calumny proved too much even for a scribbler from Slate, a bastion of Bush-bashing. He wrote at the time:

Say something awful about Richard Perle. Something vituperative. Revile him with both lungs, accuse him of the scurrilous, the gross, and the low, and I'll probably second you. But comparing the loud-mouthed libel bully/foreign-policy wheeler-dealer/revolving-door artist with a major abettor of the extermination of Europe's Jews seems to be … a bit of a reach.

Quel understatement.