Marty Kaplan: It's Tough Love Time for Obama: "During the Bush years, I was astonished by the ability of Republicans to walk in lockstep, to justify everything the administration did, to bend themselves into a pretzel in order to claim that night is day and black is white. On the Hill, among the interest groups, in the right-wing echo chamber, there was no lie too blatant or hypocrisy too appalling to be saluted as sweet reason.
Obama doesn't get that kind of treatment, nor should he. There's no reason his supporters on the left should suck it up and defend him when we disagree with him. Tough love for him is a sign of respect. Sure, vocal dissent runs the risk of propagating a media meme: 'Obama's in trouble with his base, but where are they going to go?' But so what if criticism plays into that narrative? After eight years of dissent being demonized as unpatriotic, it's a relief to be mixing it up again."
(Via Huffington Blog.)
