UNDERBUSSING REDUX: As Glenn noted earlier, the Obama camp has been reduced to calling liberal bloggers the “Tinfoil Hat Crowd.”

Recall in late August of 2010, when the White House knew their party was flailing away before the midterms, they unloaded on “The Professional Left” — i.e., core liberals who originally put them in power:

The White House is simmering with anger at criticism from liberals who say President Obama is more concerned with deal-making than ideological purity.

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

Curiously, this was dubbed an “unexpected” development by the Huffington Post at the time. Perhaps they simply needed to watch more PJTV:

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