Late last night, Sarah Palin followed in the footsteps of Glenn Beck and started echoing hysterical right-wing cries of  “Obama=Hitler!” She tweeted an endorsement of a recent article by Thomas Sowell, which has been making the rounds in right-wing circles, that compares the Obama administration to Hitler’s Nazis via the $20 billion fund provided by BP to compensate victims of the Gulf oil spill. Apparently Palin agrees with Sowell that Obama’s decision to accept money offered by BP is exactly the same as Hitler forcibly seizing private assets from German companies.

Sowell’s piece also compares Obama voters in 2008 to the people whose support helped put Hitler in power – so-called “useful idiots,” who had not been involved in the political process before and were easily manipulated.

Palin routinely takes some of the most extreme positions out there, and proves both her ignorance and her detachment from reality, in her tweets and Facebook posts. These make up the bulk of her communications operation and are picked up and echoed widely in both the right-wing and, what she calls, “lamestream” media. On both her Twitter feed and Facebook page, she recently blamed environmentalists for the BP disaster, ridiculously implying that it was THEIR idea to conduct deep sea offshore drilling. And her most recent tweet laughably refers to Alaska as the “USA’s Fort Knox,” as if the actual Fort Knox is somewhere other than the U.S.

Despite Sarah Palin’s best efforts to marginalize herself, she still plays kingmaker in the Republican Party, actively endorsing and stumping for candidates. And she enjoys a platform on FOX News, on which she’s a regular contributor. This latest statement of hers comparing the president to Hitler, however, should be a cause of concern for anyone with close ties to the former Alaska governor.

In endorsing Sowell’s views, Palin has done three things that really cast her at odds with most Americans and seem to take extremism to a new level.

1. She essentially called Obama voters in 2008 (53% of the electorate) “idiots,” doubling down on how she mocked Americans’ economic pain when she asked in her Tea Party Convention speech earlier this year, “how’s that hopey changey stuff workin’ out for ya?”
    
2. She equated holding BP accountable with Nazism and Adolph Hitler – this is more egregious than Rep. Joe Barton’s apology to BP for its having to bear some responsibility for the Gulf disaster and is squarely at odds with Americans’ desire for more corporate accountability, not less.
    
3. She clearly put herself out there with the most extreme fringes of the Tea Party and Radical Right by absurdly, and offensively, equating Barack Obama with Adolph Hitler.

Sarah Palin really should be made to answer for this. And the candidates she is on the campaign trail with and supporting – like Rand Paul in Kentucky, Sharron Angle in Nevada and a long list of other Republicans – need to, despite having their own extreme views, consider whether Palin’s over-the-top views are really something they want to be associated with.