Remember When?

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Hey, remember back during the Bush administration, when a prominent liberal Web site suggested that it would be ­desirable if the U.S. military staged a "peaceful coup" to rid the nation of its "George W. Bush problem"?

Remember when liberals said that military officers (who do not swear ­loyalty to the president, but who are sworn to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all ­enemies, foreign and domestic") would see the way the Constitution was being trampled on by Bush and Cheney, and would take it upon themselves to "sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a 'family intervention' with some form of limited, shared responsibility?"

Remember how much outrage and press coverage there was of that?

Do you remember back in the Bush years when a major Web site ran a poll asking "Should George W. Bush be killed?" with responses including "Yes," "Maybe," "If he cuts my health care" and "No"?

Remember when a liberal gathering featured speakers who not only compared Bush to Hitler, but also boldly stated that, had liberals lived in the time of the Third Reich, "We would have fought a bloody battle. So, keep your guns, and buy more guns, and buy ammunition! Take back America!"

Remember how terrible that was? Remember how bitter and divisive and hateful the liberals were for saying stuff like that?

Well, the reason you probably don't remember any of that stuff is because it didn't happen during the Bush administration. It all happened within the past two weeks, meaning the target was President Barack Obama.

The fantasy about a potential military coup to solve the "Obama problem" was a front-page story on the prominent conservative Web site NewsMax. The "should Obama be killed?" poll appeared on the social networking site Facebook. And the call for conservatives to stock up on guns and ammo and "take back America" (aka armed insurrection against the legally elected government) came from the podium at a "Take Back America" event sponsored by Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly.

The speaker, Kitty Werthmann, titled her talk, "How To Recognize Living under Nazis and Communists," apparently forgetting that the Nazis and the Communists were bitter enemies. But who cares about history when you're really trying to get your rage on?

It should also be noted that the "Take Back America" event also featured up-and-coming conservative poster girl Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who's also fond of telling supporters to be "armed and dangerous."

If any of those things had actually happened during the Bush years, you can bet your bunny slippers we'd be hearing about it to this day from every right-winger who could find his or her way to a keyboard or a microphone.

Heck, I remember people having conniptions over the fact that people occasionally referred to the then-president of the United States as "Dubbya," even though that was a nickname by which he'd been known for years.

I recall that an entry in an online contest to pick a new political ad that compared Bush to Hitler created a firestorm of indignation. That proposed ad (which didn't make the cut in the first round of the contest) didn't come near to advocating the violent overthrow of the government. But that didn't stop the Bushistas from having a years-long attack of the vapors. How dare they disrespect the office of the president that way! How awful! How hateful!

But now, we've got conservatives openly longing for a military coup as a "solution to the Obama problem." We have conservatives calling for armed insurrection. We have polls asking whether the current President should be killed.

Ronald Reagan once said about his former life as a Democrat, "I didn't leave the party, the party left me." I have to ask the Republicans I know who aren't raving lunatics: Hasn't your party left you yet? If not, what's it going to take?