Terror Arrests Bolster Democratic Case Against Bush
Democrats seized yesterday on the arrests of terrorism suspects in England to bolster their case against the Bush administration and the GOP leadership in Congress heading into the midterm elections, arguing that the terror plot showed that the administration’s homeland security policies were woefully inadequate and that the GOP-backed Iraq war was a substantial drain on military resources which are required to combat other global threats.
The developments played tidily into the hands of Democratic strategists, who noted with glee that the arrests reinforced their argument that the GOP has placed America’s national security at risk by getting the U.S military bogged down in Iraq when global terrorism is on the rise elsewhere. Polls show substantial erosion in the confidence Americans place in the Republican Party on matters of national security, which has slowly become a neutral issue and possibly a winning one for Democrats. While previous polls have shown the GOP with an advantage on terror, a recent Washington Post poll found that the trend has begun to reverse. Americans now trust Democrats to handle the war on terror better than Republicans by a notable margin, the poll demonstrated.
Democrats went on the offensive yesterday, firing off statements which hammered the GOP for failing the nation on national security matters at a critical moment. “The war in Iraq had nothing to do with the war against international terrorism, or very little to do with the war on terrorism,” said James Webb, a former Reagan administration official running as a Democratic candidate for Senate in Virginia. “It has distracted our attention, it has pulled our forces in, and we are now in a situation where we have 135,000 on the ground, which affects our ability to do a lot of things that we would be able to do otherwise.”
The terror arrests also roiled Connecticut politics, placing incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman on the defensive for his pro-Iraq war views just days after his stunning loss to challenger Ned Lamont underscored the extreme political peril facing those who support the Iraq war. Lamont hammered Lieberman yesterday, linking Lieberman to the Bush adminstration and faulting him for supporting Bush policies which have bogged the U.S. down in Iraq while global threats elsewhere are ascendant. “Both of them believe our invasion of Iraq has a lot to do with 9/11," Lamont said, speaking of Lieberman and Vice President Dick Cheney. "That’s a false premise.”
Meanwhile, Republicans who have been on the defensive for weeks over Iraq didn’t notably change their rhetorical approach yesterday, asserting once again that Democratic calls for a phased pullout from Iraq showed that the party was weak. Many political analysts have questioned the GOP’s approach, saying it is unclear whether it will be effective at a time when the public overwhelmingly says that the Iraq war was a mistake and clear majorities want to pull out of it.
This clever article by Greg Sargent parodies the neutral, savvy reportorial style found in the so-called liberal-media coverage of the administration and Beltway politics in general. His point is that if there were really a liberal bias, this is the article we’d be reading in the NYT or WaPo. Instead we’re reading articles that reflect the conventional wisdom, as shaped by administration spin, that the foiled terrror attack in England is a boon to the GOP. Read more about it at TAP.
Update: Daily Howler (scroll down to "End Time") and Columbia Journalism Review make similar points about Time’s Mike Allen‘s "reporting" about how the Lieberman loss has put Democrats on the defensive:
From Washington State to Missouri to Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates found themselves on the defensive Wednesday as the Republican Party worked ferociously at every level to try to use the primary defeat of Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut to portray the opposition as the party of weakness and isolation on national security and liberal leanings on domestic policy. Doleful Democrats bemoaned the irony: At a time when Republicans should be back on their heels because of chaos abroad and President Bush’s unpopularity, the Democrats’ rejection of a sensible, moralistic centrist has handed the GOP a weapon that could have vast ramifications for both the midterm elections of ’06 and the big dance of ’08.
This is Time Magazine not Fox News, and it wasn’t presented as an opinion piece. As CJR’s McLeary points out:
The piece quotes a veritable Who’s Who of GOP agenda-setters, with RNC chair Ken Mehlman, Vice President Cheney and White House spokesman Tony Snow (more on him later) all mouthing obviously scripted Republican talking points, as they hammer home their Fall ’06 rallying cry — that the "radical left" has hijacked the Democratic party, and that Lamont’s victory can only boost the spirits of — Osama bin Laden?
Allen seems utterly indifferent about whether these charges are true or not. He shows an utter lack of curiosity about any possible Democratic rebuttal to the Republican spin until the final paragraph, when he mockingly writes, "Trying to look on the bright side, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued a statement this morning pointing to strong turnout in the primaries and declaring that Democratic voters ‘are energized.’ The challenge for Dean, and his party, is to channel that energy in a direction that makes victory more likely, not less."
Leave a Reply