Can you imagine what they would have said if Obama had called the North Korea guy a "great guy"?

An interesting case, since this seems to be reversed.

Democrats mocked Romney's anti-Russia position in 2012. And remember the "reset button"? Now many think Putin controls American elections and the US President himself.

Which Republican politician says Russia is 'the good guys'?

When he had the summit with Putin he definitely was weirdly nice to him. I don't think he is controlled by Russians but I am sure Republicans would have thrown a complete fit if Obama had publicly stated that he trusts Putin over the CIA like Trump did during the press conference.

Again, the point is that partisans willingly accept the same behavior from "their" guy that they would condemn from the "other" guy and they don't even notice how inconsistent this is.

He's always nice when he's dealing with a foreign power. The leader of China, Japan, North Korea... He's always been very respectful and polite to their face, but that doesn't mean he hasn't implemented tough policies against them.

As regards to trusting Putin over the CIA, what was he supposed to do? Call Putin a liar to his face? Not only is that unwise, it goes against his style of negotiation as I mentioned previously.

Calling Putin a liar to his face was not the only possible alternative to calling the CIA liars.

None of them, it's simply misinformation. These people never have any response to actual debate on this topic. How do people think Trump is controlled by Russia when he's been harder on Russia than anyone else. He armed Ukraine, supported sanctions, and threatened to leave NATO because Germany wanted to build a massive new gas pipeline from Russia, thus making them even more dependent on Russia.

They did.

There was a conservative narrative in the circa 2013 timeframe that Russia had been a key ally in the war on terror by allowing military logistics for Afghanistan to travel by rail through their sphere of influence. Obama was said to have insulted our Russian friends and as a result we were forced to use unreliable roads in Pakistan instead.

IIRC, there was notion that we would be playing a 19th century style “great game” in Central Asia, basically paying off Russia to contain China’s ambitions for heavy rail service into the Middle East.

End of the day, there are lots of different policy positions floated out there as a result of our nearly two decades at war and the various stakeholders as alliances shift.

The difference in the current administration is the unbridled graft and influence peddling. Everything is transactional.

Yep, leaving NATO over a pipeline would really stick it to those Russians.

Democrats indeed mocked Romney's anti-Russia position, but from a position of wary engagement with Putin's regime rather than uncritical enthusiasm for the guy.

You believe the Republican position on Putin right now is "uncritical enthusiasm for the guy"?

As with the above, this sounds like something from another dimension to me. Who exactly are you referring to? What words/actions?

I'm pretty sure that if you do a great amount of research you will find a tremendous amount of evidence for what you ostensibly consider to be a really fantastic claim, folks.