But the frantic Democratic reaction to his comments, and an intense effort to turn a presidential gaffe into a partisan food-fight, belies the official White House dismissal of the incident…

The Democrats “protest too much,” said Richard Grenell, the U.S. spokesperson at the United Nations under President George W. Bush. “The Democrat freak-out on the president’s Russia trip is helping show how worried they are about the president’s major flub.”…

Republicans and the Romney campaign see the Democratic response as a short-term effort to what will be a long-term problem for Obama. His promise of more flexibility to Russia — still the subject of much distrust by the American public who grew up during the Cold War — is easy fodder for an October attack ad. And his comment plays into the latest Republican lines of attack — that he’s a typical politician who is going to unleash his inner-most liberal if reelected.