At least three times this year, conservatives have attacked Democrats, specifically candidates for 2008, on terms that conservatives have since turned around and committed in far stronger terms.

For example, earlier in the year, Democrats opted not to attend a debate forum hosted by anti-liberal Fox News. Conservatives heavily attacked liberals then, saying they were “afraid of journalists” and were even attacking freedom of the press. But then, Republican front-running candidates opted not to attend debates by the NAACP, the Hispanic-centric Univision, CNN’s YouTube debate, and then Tavis Smiley’s forum of African-American journalists on PBS. They even recently ran from a debate in Florida hosted by Christian groups.

And then there wass Move-on.org’s ad, again heavily attacked by conservatives, especially the GOP candidates, on the grounds that it is unacceptable to criticize a man in uniform or call him names. But then we had Limbaugh calling soldiers critical of the war “phony soldiers,” a Fox News commentator calling top military officials “a disgrace,” and now The American Conservative is calling Petraeus a “sycophant.” Doubtless we will see more right-wing insults hurled at people in the military soon.

And now, conservatives are beating up on Obama for not wearing a flag-lapel pin, apparently without even bothering to check first if Republican candidates don’t either. Do a Google Image search for Mitt Romney and John McCain, for example, and you’ll note that they also are pinless in all of their photos.

Is it the nature of conservatives to complain about something and then do the same thing they howled at in spades? Like Bush attacking Democrats in 2000 for nation-building and weakening the military? It’s one thing to criticize people of the other party and not mean it; it’s another to then not criticize people in your own party for doing the exact same thing, again and again and again.