During the last presidency, similar public expressions of citizen displeasure were enthusiastically promoted by the media and the Democrat Party. In fact, the Bush years were nothing short of an unprecedented, well-funded, permanent protest against a sitting wartime president.

“Dissent is patriotic” became the all-purpose rallying cry for an ascendant political left that learned it could take down a political party by publicly disagreeing with it over anything. Any suggestion of the illegitimacy of a single protest was met with cries of censorship and intimidation…

Never once did the media or the Democrat Party impugn the motives of anti-war-riors. In fact, white supremacist David Duke and much of the out-of-power white-power movement similarly rallied against the Iraq war. But the anti-war movement was not maligned, Napolitano-style, using guilt by association.