When did the GOP become the whiners?

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/01/opinion/raines-whining-republicans/index.html

When did the GOP become the whiners?
By Howell Raines, Special to CNN

snip//

Any short history of the whining sweepstakes should start by noting that a tectonic shift is taking place when the candidates and handlers of one side begin asking, in some form, this question: Why are they being allowed to do to us what we've happily been doing to them since -- to choose a recent precedent to this partisan shift -- the swift boating of John Kerry? You see what's that led to? Why, these Obamians want to turn Romney's brilliant business career into an unpatriotic defect!

The current situation is noteworthy because the Democratic Party seemed to have the exclusive franchise on piteous bleating dating back to Richard Nixon's victory in 1968 and throughout the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush years. Truth be told, the Democrats managed to keep whining throughout most of the triumphant Bill Clinton years.

The game changer clearly has been Barack Obama, whose surprising taste for bloodying the noses of domestic critics and foreign adversaries seems to hark back to the last time the Democrats were unashamed political warriors.

snip//

There's something inescapably petulant about Romney's preference for critiquing all aspects of the economy—but not his role at Bain. The Democrats should turn a deaf ear to Romney's pleas for mercy on his record as a businessman and tax shelterer. The new Quinnipiac poll figures showing Obama ahead in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania demonstrate that Republican-style attack politics work for anyone with the gumption to use them, including this year's pugnacious Democrats.

For the rest of this election season, if Democrats are smart, they'll keep reaching into the Lee Atwater bad-boy trick bag and let the season's reigning choir of complaint blend its many voices: the charismatic duo of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the tea party, the anchors and panelists of Fox News and now the hapless Rich Gorka.

They all seem to know the same tunes: Why don't voters believe what we do? Why isn't Obama the milquetoast he looks like? Why can't we change the photo-op rules for Mitt?