Obama's new 'patriotism'

Kirsten Powers:

SO, it's come to this: The man who was maligned as unpatriotic for not wearing a flag pin is playing the patriotism card.

The New York Times reported Saturday that President Obama called three Republican senators who were supporting his stimulus plan "to thank them for their patriotism in helping to advance the bill at a critical time."

Robert Borosage, head of The Campaign for America's Future (which calls itself "the strategy center for the progressive movement") echoed the sentiment in a statement blasting opponents of the plan: "The overwhelming majority of conservatives chose partisanship over patriotism."

It seems like only yesterday that Obama and liberals - including me - were chastising the GOP for playing this game.

Of course, Obama's statement implies that if you don't support the stimulus package, you're unpatriotic. (That would seem to include the 11 House Democrats who opposed the bill.)

If that reasoning sounds familiar, it's because it's exactly what the GOP has argued about liberals for decades when they didn't support ill-conceived or badly executed wars or increases in military spending.

...

Republicans never challenged Democrat patriotism for opposing victory. Perhaps they should have, but they did not. In fact the only challenge to patriotism about the war came from Howard Dean and he was aiming his barbs at the President.

What Democrats are doing now is much worse and it will backfire, because the voters are on the side of the opponents to this boondoggle.