Mitch McConnell seemed to think this triumph was faceless:
On September 11, 2001, America came together and vowed that we would never forget the memory of those whose lives were lost on that terrible day. Tonight’s announcement shows that we have made good on that pledge.
Palin tweeted:
Thank you, American men and women in uniform. You are America's finest and we are all so proud. Thank you for fighting against terrorism.
Seriously, that's all. No mention of the president.
The idiot Bachmann did the same:
A time to express our deepest gratitude to the U.S. military for taking out Osama bin Laden.
Mitt Romney carefully ranked his thanks:
Congratulations to our intelligence community, our military and the president.
At least John Boehner had the courtesy to recall the president's name, albeit both of them. After thanking the troops, he added:
I also want to commend President Obama and his team, as well as President Bush, for all of their efforts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.
The Republican National Committee went passive-voice on us:
Justice was delivered to a ruthless terrorist courtesy of men and women of the United States military.
And then the "real" story, the one posted on "What Really Happened," a leading conspiracy-theory Web site:
Yes, we were hacked. Starting just moments before President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, our website was hit with what the hosting company described as a massive distributed denial of service attack, no doubt to prevent the public from accessing the documentation showing Bin Laden actually died in December of 2001 of natural causes.
The point of presenting these varied reactions is that a half-cracked, delusional conspiracy-theory site emerges as the least dishonorable among them. At least it's consistent, however psychotic its consistency may be. As for the others? They simply cannot bring themselves to honor the presidency even in the most incontrovertibly honorable moment -- if, that is, a political opponent happens to be occupying the office.
For eight years they made excuses for the great and determined leadership of President Bush, who in reality dishonored the memory of the victims of 9/11 by diverting U.S. resources into an insane, unprovoked war of his choosing, letting bin Laden slip away.
Only about halfway into his first term, President Obama accomplishes what the "great" Bush not only failed to accomplish, but obviously -- and shamefully beyond words -- was rather indifferent about. About Obama's leadership, the GOP says little or nothing.
While President Obama has quietly gone about the essential business of the American people, the GOP has instead most notably labored to exclude the former from the latter's ranks. So yes, there's a striking imbalance between the two in competence and governing ability and vision and seriousness and the depths to which they'll take their partisanship. But in the end, those differences aren't what will alienate the American people from the GOP. What will make the populace heave in disgust at the GOP is, rather, its utter lack of simple decency.