"One Thing Hitler Did Right, According To Mitt Romney" is how BuzzFeed is headlining the video below, and Democratic activists are already taking it further and hitting my inbox with "Romney praises Hitler!" subject lines.
So, yes, there are bad people who praise Hitler as misunderstood.
And there are ignorant people who begin sentences, "if only he wasn’t an anti-Semite …," who don’t get that Hitler starts and ends with "anti-Semite." One cannot imagine him as otherwise, one cannot imagine his crimes without understanding that he wanted to end the Jews.
And Mitt Romney is neither of these, in this 2007 video. Arguing for liquefied coal as an energy alternative, he mentions Hitler only to note that the technology existed as long ago as the 1940s, which is when Hitler planned to use it:
Liquefied coal — Gosh, Hitler during the Second World War, I guess, because he was concerned about losing his oil, liquefied oil, that technology is still there.
Chalk this one up to innocuous.
