As Politico noted yesterday, a lot of the backlash against the Bergdahl deal this week has been, in the minds of Obama’s ever-faithful aides, a mere “proxy for the hatred toward the president.” Mmm hmm. If that really is the case and all of this noise is just a bunch of whipped-up spiteful nonsense on the part of the president’s opponents, then as George Will put it this evening, “the project of whipping it up is remarkably bipartisan.” Sure, the usual Democratic sycophants (and not even all of them!) are falling all over themselves to defend the White House and expose those dastardly Republican haterz, but there are plenty of very obviously legitimate questions and issues coming from both sides, via RCP:

When he says it’s whipped up, he means it’s synthetic; when he means it’s synthetic, he means it’s inauthentic. Which means it’s yet again, a recurring theme in his presidency, which is there’s no such thing as honest intelligent disagreement with him. Clearly, you can’t exchange hostages and POWs and have all of this without some kind of controversy. And if this is whipped up, the project of whipping it up is remarkably bipartisan. To take just two examples, both Senators from West Virginia, Jay Rockefeller and [Joe] Manchin, are clearly disturbed about this. Jay Rockefeller is no rookie, Manchin is in his first term, Jay Rockefeller is the fourth most senior Democrat in the Senate. We can all stipulate, as the lawyers say, that perhaps a disturbed young man in a very disturbing situation did something that we’re going to have a long time sorting out.

Oops: Yep, I meant “disagreement” in my headline, not “agreement.” Fixed.