After the election, it took all of six days — a surprisingly long time, actually — before a Southern GOP Congressman said something crazy about President-elect Barack Obama.

The charge: Obama is a closet totalitarian Marxist and potential Hitler-in-waiting.

From The Associated Press:

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Rep. Paul Broun [R-Ga.] said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.”

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

Obama’s comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado in which he called for expanding the nation’s foreign service.

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” Obama said in July. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

You know when a politician prefaces what they’re about to say with “It may sound a bit crazy and off-base,” you’re in for a doozy.

According to The Associated Press, Obama transition spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama “was referring in the speech to a proposal for a civilian reserve corps that could handle postwar reconstruction efforts such as rebuilding infrastructure — an idea endorsed by the Bush administration.”

Broun continued by suggesting Obama plans to ban gun ownership. He also said that, despite the fact that he was blatantly comparing Obama to Hitler, he’s “not comparing him” to Hitler.

“We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential of going down that road.”

Right-wing looney tunes have already exhausted socialism, terrorism, Anti-Christ, and now Hitler. They had better start pacing themselves, or they’re going to run out of hyperbole before Obama even takes office.

Not shame in electing a president. But shame that we as a nation allowed certain members of the Republican Party to try to resurrect one of this country’s darkest hours — the reign of  Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Between the end of World War II and through the mid-1950s, this country shriveled in the fear of an internal communist invasion. It was fueled by the misguided work of McCarthy, who summoned scores of people to appear before his subcommittee in his pursuit of reputed communists and Soviet spies in the federal government.

I bring this up now, having just watched the disgraced Tom DeLay on “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” The former House GOP leader described the Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Barack Obama, as “Marxist,” even suggesting that Obama was prepared to remake America in a Communist mold.

When we talk about the end of the McCarthy era in America, we most often mean the damning news reports narrated by Edward R. Morrow on his “See It Now” program in March 1954.

But the more damning blow came during the Army-McCarthy hearings, which began in April that year. On June 9, the Army’s chief attorney Joseph Welch asked that McCarthy’s list of communists or subversives in defense plants be turned over to the U.S. Atty. Gen. McCarthy responded by saying he should check on his legal colleague Fred Fisher. Welch lashed out: “Until this moment, senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness….Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

The answer was no. But the tide against McCarthy had already turned. His reign would soon be over, and a nation would ask itself how it had allowed fear to triumph over reason, how it had lost its collective head when intelligence, not passion, was most needed.

As Election Day draws closer,  one would hope that the leadership of the Republican Party and the campaign of Sen. John McCain would understand that attacks such as DeLay’s had no place then and certainly have no place now. Let us assassinate Obama no further. We’ve done enough.