As I repeatedly pointed out during the Bush years, Republican officials and conservative pundits frequently suggested that Democrats were betraying the country after 9/11. In particular, many suggested that Democrats were intentionally hurting America, endangering US troops, etc. in a series of smears that caused great liberal outrage.

Now that President Obama is in office, however, the parties have switched roles. Republicans have gone from denouncing dissent to engaging in it, prompting a (smaller) number of Democrats and liberals to attack dissent against Obama as potentially treasonous. The latest development is that an influential group of liberal commentators have begun to suggest that Republicans are trying to sabotage the US economy. As with Democratic opponents of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, however, there is no evidence that the opposition party sought to create a negative outcome.

The swami-like mind-reading of putative GOP motives started with Stan Collender, who asserted in August that “Republican policymakers [see] economic hardship as the path to election glory this November.” Paul Krugman promoted the claim in his New York Times column, claiming that “Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House.” Steve Benen added that “We’ve gone from Republicans rooting for failure to Republicans trying to guarantee failure.”

When former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson objected (without noting similar claims by the Bush administration), Benen issued a weasel-worded protest, stating that he “obviously can’t read the minds of GOP policymakers, but it seems at least worth talking about whether they’re prioritizing the destruction of a presidency over the needs of the nation.” Would Benen also agree that “it seems at least worth talking about whether” Democrats prioritized the destruction of Bush’s presidency over the needs of the nation? Almost surely not.

A more sensible response came from Greg Sargent, who conceded the impossibility of discerning the GOP’s motives:

First, let’s stipulate that it’s largely fruitless to charge that Republicans are planning to actively sabotage the economy. You can’t prove such a thing…

There’s undeniably an element of partisanship in Republican opposition to Obama’s economic policies, but that’s how politics works. Democrats also reflexively opposed many of President Bush’s proposals, including his initiatives for Iraq, but that doesn’t mean they were sabotaging US foreign policy to ensure his defeat. Moreover, the increasingly routine nature of these accusations hinders open debate. In a democracy, it’s crucial that political leaders can publicly oppose the executive branch without being accused of hurting the country. That principle is no less true today than it was during President Bush’s time in office.

Update 11/29 10:58 AM: I’ve removed a Matthew Yglesias quote from the post above. While I think his claim that “the White House needs to be prepared … for a true worst case scenario of deliberate economic sabotage” goes too far, it does not include “swami-like mind-reading of putative GOP motives” like Collender, Krugman, and Benen.