When Democrats assailed then-President George W. Bush over the prosecution of the war on terror or treatment of terrorists held at Gitmo, those of us on the right called them wrong, stupid, misguided, foolish and a variety of other unflattering names.

One thing we didn’t do, was question Democrats’ patriotism.

Of course, when you did call them all those other names, they claimed their patriotism – rather than their wisdom or sanity – was being questioned.

Once President Barack Obama was elected, opposition to him on anything (not just national security-related matters) got you tagged as a racist, your patriotism questioned or both.

During the Obamacare debate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer accused opponents of the bill of being “simply un-American.” President Obama famously likened Republicans to “hostage-takers” over the deal extending the Bush era tax rates that Obama himself agreed to.

More recently, on “Fox News Sunday” Juan Williams accused opponents of the DREAM act of being “almost anti-American.”

Now we’ve got Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker with a hysterical column calling Republicans unpatriotic for opposing the START treaty. For those of you unfamiliar with Tucker, she suggested that instead of bombing Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 that we should instead drop food – SPAM specifically. Neither Tucker nor her editors realized that spam is spiced ham and therefore not something Muslims would eat. (Now, if she’d suggested dropping bombs with SPAM containers duct taped to them…)

Don’t expect this to diminish anytime soon. The professional left and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) have a double standard when it comes to acceptable political dialog. The hypocrisy and projection will continue.