Eric Fingerhut at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency does a nice job chronicling the back-and-forth over efforts by Rush Limbaugh and others to bring Nazi imagery into the debate over healthcare reform.

The conservative radio host has drawn condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress and the Simon Weisenthal Center for a lengthy bit in which he compared “the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in German.”

“Well, the Nazis were against big business,” Limbaugh said. “They hated big business and, of course, we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution. They were for two years of mandatory voluntary service to Germany. They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working, one of which was the Autobahn.”

Jewish Democrats have pressured House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, a Jewish Republican from Virginia who has said the GOP needs Limbaugh, to repudiate his comments. But some Jewish Republicans say a Democratic congressman should also be held accountable for bringing “brown shirts” into the debate over healthcare reform.

Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington state Democrat, had said he would not be holding public meetings with constituents during the August recess out of concern for the possibility of being ambushed by critics of healthcare reform, who have disrupted other such events.

“What we’re seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics,” Baird told the Columbian of Vancouver, Wash. “I mean that very seriously.”

According to Fingerhut, the controversy “underscores the degree to which Jewish organizations continue to lose ground in their fight to keep partisans on all sides from demonizing their political opponents as Nazis.”