It started with the Democratic National Committee: An accusation that Republicans who've criticized the awarding of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama are on the same side as the Taliban and Hamas, who also criticized the award. Now, others on the left are picking up the theme and running with it, extending it to conservative media figures.
Both Media Matters and Daily Kos have produced videos compiling reactions to the award and suggesting that the right has aligned itself with terrorists. You can see the Media Matters video below. After a series of clips put together by the liberal press watchdog, the video ends with a black screen, on top of which is white text asking, "So if it's not America, who are the conservatives rooting for?"
As I observed in my post about the DNC's message, there's no small amount of irony in play here -- Obama got the award, in part, for not being former President George W. Bush, but the left is now using a message ripped from the Bush administration's playbook. My colleague Glenn Greenwald had similar thoughts, writing, "Remember how, during the Bush years, the GOP would disgustingly try to equate liberals with Terrorists by pointing out that they happened to have the same view on a particular matter (The Left opposes the war in Iraq, just like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah do! or bin Laden's criticisms of Bush sound just like Michael Moore's! )."
And it's true -- compare the Media Matters video to something like what Bush himself said in 2006, as the midterm elections approached and Republicans became desperate to stave off devastating losses: "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses." At the time, liberal blogs like Think Progress smacked Bush for saying this.
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