Rush Limbaugh must be ashamed of his comparisons of President Obama to Hitler. Why else would he try to hide them?

Here's the story:

On Monday's broadcast, Limbaugh stated:

LIMBAUGH: Last night, Bart Stupak damaged the already crippled Democrat Party more than he knows, more than they know. That executive order, totally laughable, Stupak just wanted his “notice me” moment. Stupak is no different than Neville Chamberlain, came back with that little letter from Hitler, “Oh, yeah, Hitler says no war between his country and ours.” Churchill said, “Well, you're a fool.”

A very clear comparison of Rep. Bart Stupak to Chamberlain and Obama to Hitler.

And not the first one he's made. On his radio show last August, Limbaugh asserted that “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.” Limbaugh has also repeatedly “compared Obama's health care policies to the Nazis' ”

So on Tuesday's MSNBC Live, David Shuster hosted a segment on whether Limbaugh was speaking for the GOP. During the segment, progressive radio host Mark Levine -- not to be confused with right-wing smear merchant Mark Levin -- mentioned Limbaugh's comparison of Obama to Hitler the day before (Levine got the day mixed up):

LEVINE: David, if you heard Rush Limbaugh today, he specifically compared Barack Obama to Hitler. He said in fact that Bart Stupak was the Neville Chamberlain to Barack Obama's Hitler. This is not rhetoric that's coming out of nowhere. People understand the tea party activists are drawing Hitler mustaches on Obama. They're doing it for a reason.

Fast forward to Wednesday's broadcast of Limbaugh's show. Limbaugh aired Levine's MSNBC comments, but he edited out Levine's specific citation of the example from the previous day. When Limbaugh aired Levine's comments, here's what they sounded like, with the missing line in brackets:

LIMBAUGH: If you heard Rush Limbaugh today, he specifically compared Barack Obama to Hitler. [He said in fact that Bart Stupak was the Neville Chamberlain to Barack Obama's Hitler.] This is not rhetoric that's coming out of nowhere. People understand the tea party activists are drawing Hitler mustaches on Obama. They're doing it for a reason.

Limbaugh then went on to state that he had never mentioned Hitler on Tuesday's show. Rush was right; in fact, he mentioned Hitler on Monday's show. Still, talk about disingenuous. Limbaugh even appears to have removed the transcript of the Monday segment with the Obama-Hitler comparison from his website.

But here's where it gets really good.

After airing Shuster's comments citing the Harris poll -- before airing Levine's comments -- Limbaugh effectively compares Obama to Hitler!

Here's Limbaugh's website's transcript of the segment, with Limbaugh's Hitler comparison in bold:

SHUSTER: Right now it's Rush Limbaugh today once again railing against Democrats, demonizing President Obama, and it may be working. According to a new Harris poll, 67% of Republicans think the president is a socialist, 57% of Republicans think he's Muslim, 45% don't think he was born in this country, 38% of Republicans think President Obama is, quote, “doing what Hitler did,” and yet this: 24% say the president of the United States is the anti-Christ. Does Rush Limbaugh speak for the GOP? Republicans must be getting some of this garbage from somewhere. Who are they getting it from?

RUSH: Well, I don't know. (laughing) Anti-Christ and Muslim, I don't know where they're getting that because that's not a part of the program. I haven't really made that one of our topics here, but the methodology of this Harris poll was greatly flawed. I didn't even report the poll yesterday. I knew these guys would be touting it. I didn't report it. Other pollsters are raising a big stink about the methodology of this thing, but it achieved its purpose. I told you on Monday: This all going to happen now. We're going to be the biggest evil enemy in the history of the country now. Now, as far as this Hitler business, one of the first things the National Socialist Party did was try to nationalize health care. I mean, facts are facts: The president is a socialist. The number ought to be much higher than 67%. And we got the New York Times saying so today. We've got what's-her-face, Sebelius, saying so today. We got John Dingell: “Control the people.” Worse than socialist. Well, Shuster was mentioning all that to one of his guests, a guy by the name of Mark Levine, who is an attorney (not Mark “Le-vin,” Mark “Le-veen”) and Shuster said, “Why is it fair to pin this on Limbaugh?”

LEVINE: If you heard Rush Limbaugh today, he specifically compared Barack Obama to Hitler. (sic) This is not rhetoric that's coming out of nowhere. People understand the tea party activists are drawing Hitler mustaches on Obama. They're doing it for a reason. There are a lot of mostly angry, white, Southern, male, fundamentalist Christians who are very angry.

Also, note the "(sic)" in the transcript of Levine's comments. As though Limbaugh's transcriber wanted to emphasize Limbaugh never compared Obama to Hitler -- except in the comments Limbaugh subsequently made.

(Levine has written about the whole episode on his website.)

It is unclear why Limbaugh would go out of his way to edit the audio and emphasize he didn't compare Obama to Hitler when he has done so previously and would go on to make such a comparison in that very segment. Perhaps Limbaugh just wanted to attack Levine and discredit him with his listeners.

Perhaps Limbaugh is concerned because people might start to believe such comparisons.

Nah.