KOA's Rima: Reaction to Obama's speeches evokes "shades of Germany 1939"

Summary: Echoing other conservative broadcasters, Newsradio 850 KOA guest host Sean Rima alluded to Adolf Hitler during a discussion of Sen. Barack Obama, asserting that the reaction of Obama's audiences to his speeches evokes "shades of Germany 1939." Rima further stated that "because of the passion of the moment, because of the eloquence of the speech," audiences are "not paying any attention to what the guy's actually saying. And that's scary stuff."

Substituting as host for the June 27 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Jon Caldara Show, Sean Rima repeated the conservative tactic of alluding to Adolf Hitler when discussing Sen. Barack Obama, stating that the reaction of audiences to Obama's speeches evokes "shades of Germany 1939" and calling the purported phenomenon "very scary stuff." Rima later added, "Hitler was a genius when it came to manipulating people's emotional states at a particular moment in history when they were -- where an entire nation was vulnerable to that sort of eloquence and that sort of passion. Told 'em what they wanted to hear, and then he took it all away, and just went nuts."

As Colorado Media Matters noted, as guest co-host for the April 4 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Caplis & Silverman Show, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez similarly told co-host Craig Silverman regarding Obama, "[P]lease don't take offense at this characterization. But if you study history, the people that have created great excitement with the masses, whether that's Mussolini or Hitler -- they come along and create this fervor for change."

Additionally, as Colorado Media Matters pointed out, on his April 30 Newsradio 850 KOA program, "Gunny" Bob Newman responded to a caller who complained that people judged Obama's character without really knowing him by stating, "I didn't know Hitler. I didn't know Stalin, you know, to take a couple of dramatic figures from history. Not that Obama is Stalinesque, not that Obama is Hitleresque, but we didn't know those two either."

From the June 27 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Jon Caldara Show, with guest host Sean Rima:

CALLER: The last guy that had the charisma like this and banned everybody's guns -- wasn't that in 1939 with Adolf Hitler?

RIMA: Yeah, that was. [laughs] And I -- you know, people yell at me when I make the comparison, 'cause I'm not comparing them as human beings. But if you are a student of history -- especially if you're a student of World War II -- and you observe an Obama speech, and you observe the way people react to his speeches --

CALLER: Oh, yeah.

RIMA: And then you actually, sort of analyze and break down what he's actually saying in his speeches, I -- yeah, it's shades of, shades of Germany 1939 in the sense that people are totally disregarding their own logic and totally disregarding their own analysis of what is being said to them because of the passion of the moment, because of the eloquence of the speech, and because of the possibility for history-making, and they're totally not paying any attention to what the guy's actually saying. And that's scary stuff. That's very scary stuff.

CALLER: You know, it's -- America better wake up. And I'll tell you what my mom always told me: Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

RIMA: Right. Right. Good point.

CALLER: Thanks, Sean.

RIMA: I gotta run, man.

CALLER: Later.

RIMA: Yup. Yeah, and I -- seriously. I used to love during the Bush administration how many people compared him to Hitler. Compared George Walker Bush to Hitler, who they also claimed to be, you know, a complete moron. Hitler wasn't stupid. Hitler wasn't a moron. Hitler was a genius when it came to manipulating people's emotional states at a particular moment in history when they were -- where an entire nation was vulnerable to that sort of eloquence and that sort of passion. Told 'em what they wanted to hear, and then he took it all away, and just went nuts.

—E.B.