Questioning One's Patriotism

A while ago, I expressed my frustration with the meme that Republicans were constantly "questioning the patriotism" of Democrats; here's what I said:

"Whenever a Democrat is questioned on his stands on national security, liberals will scream, quite shrilly, that people are "questioning their patriotism". Interestingly, it's hard to find any actual quotes where mainstream Republicans actually say words to the effect of "he's not patriotic"; in fact, it mostly seems to be Democrats who "question people's patriotism". (More quotes here; I didn't bother to look up source references for all of them, but they sound reasonable.)"

Yesterday, we saw New York Times columnist Paul Krugman doing it again -- if you're a TimesSelect subscriber you can read it here, otherwise you'll have to go here. Here's part of what he says:

"The administration has, instead, built its power on myths: the myth of presidential leadership, the ugly myth that the administration is patriotic while its critics are not...
"Apologists can shout all they like that no laws were broken, that hardball politics is nothing new, or whatever. The fact remains that officials close to both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush leaked the identity of an undercover operative for political reasons. Whether or not that act was illegal, it was clearly unpatriotic." [emphasis mine]

He seems to have no inkling of how completely ridiculous this sounds...