"al-Qaida would be dancing in the streets."

There's been a familiar recent tactic on the right to assess all of their political opponents as being in league with terrorists. It's not particularly special when it happens, but it should be noted at every opportunity that this is what they're trying to do. Here's an example of the technique by Mitt Romney, at an retirement village in Florida. It got practically no coverage except from this small local newspaper.

"We're under attack from jihadists," Romney said, calling it one of the great issues of our time. While Romney did not mention the war in Iraq by name, he cited the report by Gen. David Petraeus that Americans are making progress helping the Sunnis reject al-Qaida.

"Thank heavens Barack Obama wasn't president," Romney said. "We'd have been out of there, and al-Qaida would be dancing in the streets."

He went on to call the Democratic Party the party of "bigger government and bigger taxes and Big Brother". Really, Big Brother? Who started that warrantless wiretapping and data mining and phone and email surveillance again?

My point is that it's now become commonplace among Republicans to question the patriotism of their counterparts, so much so that it no longer registers a shrug. Yet they huff and they puff when they perceive "angry libruls" questioning their revered subjects like St. David Petraeus.