ONCE AGAIN, REPUBLICANS SAY EVERYTHING BAD IS DEMOCRATIC

Over at the Daily Beast, Peter Beinart actually appropriately chides current Republicans for attacking anti-terrorism steps by the Obama administration that they considered just fine in the Bush years. But I think Beinart is overstating the importance of this:

On the surface, the sides are clear: Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative, hawk versus dove. But the more you examine Cheney's attacks on Obama, the more it looks like Obama has simply gotten caught in the crossfire of an intra-Republican civil war. Cheney’s real target may be less Obama than his predecessor, George W. Bush....

On Sunday, Cheney appeared on ABC's This Week with Jonathan Karl...

Usually, when reporters ask politicians why they're attacking the other party for things their own side has done they deny that there is any double standard, and find some distinction to suggest that what the other guys are doing is much worse. Cheney didn’t do that. To the contrary, he repeatedly acknowledged that his gripes with Obama are also gripes with George W. Bush....

You have to hand it to the guy. He may be an ideological fanatic, but he's no partisan hack. Time and again, with barely a nudge from the questioner, Cheney essentially volunteered that, "Yes, George W. Bush was soft on terror, too." ...

Really, I wouldn't make too much of this. It's just the foreign policy version of the current GOP message about spending and deficits: yes, members of our party did things we now denounce, but that just means those members weren't true Republicans. They were honorary Democrats. So it's still Democrats who suck.