It's hard to decide who deserves the most scorn: the posturing Republicans in the Senate or the spineless Democrats. In fighting President Obama's plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, Republicans make it clear that they'll put politics above everything else. And Democrats? President Obama can count on them only if their political risk is less than minimal.

It should have been easy to stand up to the Republicans. The country's top military officer, the Joint Chiefs' Mike Mullen, says the prison should be closed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates - who was also Defense Secretary under George Bush - says it should be closed. Tom Ridge, who headed Homeland Security under Bush, says it should be closed. Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell says it should be closed.

But when Republicans conjured up images of terrorists in American neighborhoods, Senate Democrats turned tail and ran, giving Republicans a 90-6 majority to deny funds to close Guantanamo.

In an interview on NBC's "Today" program, Defense Secretary Gates accused the Republicans of "fear-mongering." And when "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer asked Colin Powell whether he thinks the prisoners at Guantanamo "can be brought here and kept safely," this was Powell's answer: "Yes. Yes. I think it should have been done immediately."

As Obama noted in his powerful address at the National Archives on May 21, dealing with the Guantanamo detainees is complicated, and the administration is still developing its plans. And Obama is not the most liberal of presidents: some of his decisions about the detainees - indefinite detention, for instance - are much too similar to those of the Bush administration.

But in moving aggressively to close Guantanamo, Obama is right. And the Democrats have played right into the Republicans' hands, making it harder for the president to do what needs to be done.

Democrats say they agree with Obama that Guantanamo has to be closed; they just want more detail. Well, we'll see. Obama spelled out quite a bit more detail in his speech at the National Archives. It wasn't enough to satisfy the Democrats, though. And Senate leader Harry Reid apparently believes that none of the Guantanamo detainees should be brought to prisons in the US. It's hard to see how we can close Guantanamo without doing that.

We're already holding terrorists in prisons in this country, people who have been tried and convicted in courts in the United States. Among them: Ramzi Yousef, one of the leaders of the original plot to blow up the World Trade Center; Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted of being involved in the 9/11 plot; and attempted shoe-bomber Richard Reid.

The Republicans in the Senate know that. So do their quaking Democratic colleagues. If the Democrats can't stand up to the posturing on Guantanamo, I can't imagine what they'll do when the debates start about health care and global warming.

Guantanamo has fueled the hatred of people around the world. It has helped terrorist organizations in their recruitment efforts. It has been a blot on the nation's reputation. "Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world," Obama said in his speech at the National Archives.

"I took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution as Commander in Chief," said Obama, "and as a citizen, I know that we must never, ever turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake."

"From Europe to the Pacific," said Obama, "we've been the nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law. That is who we are. And where terrorists offer only the injustice of disorder and destruction, America must demonstrate that our values and our institutions are more resilient than a hateful ideology."

If we can resist the gut-grabbing emotionalism of the Republican rhetoric, most of us will find not just logic but patriotic pride in Obama's argument. It's a great shame that the Democrats aren't helping to carry the banner.