Just in case you forgot how essentially dishonest the opposition to Obama is, here’s a reminder.

Newt Gingrich on Fox News, March 7th:

Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. … All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening. And we don’t have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes. … This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with.

So, Obama went the no-fly-zone route, bombed to defend Libyan rebels, and did not commit ground troops. All good, right?

Newt on the Today Show , March 23:

I would not have intervened. I think there are a lot of other ways to affect Gaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region that we could have worked with. … Having decided to go there, if Qaddafi does not leave power it will be a defeat for the U.S., it will lengthen our engagement, it will increase our costs.

Criticism of Obama from the right wing is, and never has been, about anything he has actually done. Obama doesn’t bomb Libya, he’s wrong. Obama does bomb Libya, he’s wrong. Nor is this the only example; half the stuff Obama has done is stuff that Republicans used to support, not too long ago. They don’t oppose ideas, or policy, or very much at all, in fact. If Obama does anything, it’s wrong and will harm the country. And if Obama were to do something they could not possibly oppose–like advocate for a ban on abortion, for example–they would simply switch to criticizing how and why he’d do it while the goal posts much farther down the field and criticizing him for not going that far.

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By the way, a little aside: right-wingers are now saying that the presidency is “beneath” Sarah Palin, and that it would be a “step down” for her. (Didn’t you know? Palin is the new Oprah.)

And liberals, in case you forgot, are elitists.