STRANGE NEW RESPECT:

Shot: New DNC ad: Why can’t these Republicans be respectful of radical Islam, like George Bush was?

—Headline by Allahpundit of Hot Air last night.

Chaser:

When Reagan was president, he was compared unfavorably to Eisenhower.When Bush was president, he was compared unfavorably to Reagan.

Know this: When a Republican takes office in 2013, he will be compared unfavorably to Bush, who will be held out as a “conservative who at least had some heart and some sense of compassion” and the current Republican President will be, as each Republican President is called in turn, the worst President in all of history.

—Ace of Spades, August 4th, 2010. Many more examples of this inexorable trend — the left discovering Strange New Respect for Gerald Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and even Richard Nixon rounded up here.

(And for a more jaw-clenching trip down memory lane, 24 examples of George W. Bush and the GOP being smeared as Nazis, by such otherwise disparate lefties as Al Gore, John Glenn, Harry Reid to Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Linda Ronstadt, and Janeane Garofalo during his term in office.)