Ah, Yes...The Hitler Comparison (UPDATED)

There's an election coming up, did you know that?  Senator Casey (who beat Rick Santorum by 18 points 6 years ago) is being challenged by a guy named Tom Smith.

He's also a tea party guy.  Did you know that?

Well, Tom the tea party guy spoke at a recent tea party rally and said the usual things:

Smith said regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation, coupled with other state and federal regulations, made it impossible for him to carry his company in the future and he sold them, but that having lived the American Dream influenced him to run for office.

“I see that dream being diminished by this government and I will not stand by and just go into retirement without trying to make a difference and that’s why I am here today.”

But that's not all he said.

Huffingtonpost reports:

Tom Smith during remarks at the Blair County Tea Party FreedomFest 2012 in Hollidaysburg said the speaker before him had spoken "eloquently." The preceding speaker, Phil Waite, had just compared Obama's policies with those employed by Hitler in the 1920s and 1930s, and warned that Obama could try to do the same thing to the United States.

Ahh...Reductio ad Hitlerum from the Tea Party.  And praised as "eloquent" by the GOP/Tea Party's Senatorial Candidate, Tom Smith.

Why is this not a surprise?
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There's an update from Huffingtonpost:

The Republican Party's U.S. Senate nominee in Pennsylvania has retracted his praise for a Tea Party member who compared President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, saying he didn't pay attention to the speaker's remarks before praising him.

Tom Smith, a retired coal mine owner who is challenging Sen. Bob Casey (D), told HuffPost in a statement that he had not been listening closely to the speech in which Tea Party member Phil Waite compared Obama's policies to those of Hitler and the Nazi Party and warned that Obama might follow in Hitler's fascist footsteps. Smith had started his own remarks at the Blair County Tea Party FreedomFest 2012 by saying that Waite had spoken "eloquently."

"On Sunday July 1st, I was a speaker at the Blair County ‘Freedom Festival.’ In the opening of my remarks, as a courtesy, I acknowledged the previous speaker," Smith said in his statement. "I regret that I did not pay as close attention to the individual’s remarks as I should have. Having since had these remarks brought to my attention, I regret and withdraw my acknowledgement. The rhetoric was both divisive and beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse."

Good for him.  But I'd think that if he wants to join the Senate, he'd do his homework before opening his mouth.