Nope. That schtick has gone on well before that. It was full-tilt under the Slick Willardbots of 4 years ago (and some of the Hucksterites, too). Palin supporters never employed such measures to that degree. It’s a typical trolling technique, anyhow. The Perrybots are now almost exclusively employing it at the present time (or at least after they’ve followed down their first few talking points of accusing their opponents of being Willard/Zero/Paulbots).
There were a few 6 to 12 that used that secret Paul-bot attack stuff all the time, now they have transformed and no longer talk about Paul all focused on Perry-bots. And as you noticed the Perry-bots have picked up the Paul-bot strategy.
This is even more interesting because just this year consistent Bush defenders are talking like BDSers that they used to go after. Open borders (amnesty) Bush defenders are now very worried about the border (amnesty) just this year. they used to call us Border-bots.