I don’t have anything particularly insightful to add to this, but the LA Times had a very good piece today describing how Democrats are responding to this week’s thwarted terrorist plot. As the article describes, Republicans immediately began pushing its predictable Dems-are-weak arguments, but in this case, Dems pushed right back.
Their aggressive stance was evident hours after British authorities announced they had disrupted a plot to blow up airplanes: Leading Democrats blamed the terrorism threat on “mismanagement” by the Bush administration and charged that the Iraq war had become a “rallying cry” for the enemy.
On Friday, Democrats continued with a series of sharp statements accusing the White House of exploiting the case for political gain.
The LAT’s Peter Wallsten noted that Dem leaders have been hesitant to engage in this kind of debate in the past “out of fear of stirring up voters on an issue that, since 2001, has largely helped Republicans.” Thankfully, they seem to have learned that this strategy was an abject political failure — Republicans would smear the Dems, while the Dems wanted to shift the discussion to domestic policy. National security became the dominating issue in the nation, and Dems were ceding ground based on perceptions they themselves were feeding with their silence.
This week, they tried the opposite. It’s about time.
Democrats said they were determined now to maintain their criticism through the November elections, citing public anxiety over the Iraq war and other foreign policy challenges that might, for the first time in three election cycles, lessen the GOP advantage.
The new strategy, spearheaded largely by the Senate Democratic leadership, is a direct response to surveys showing that Republicans hold only a marginal lead over Democrats when voters are asked whom they trust to keep the country safer.
But Republicans believe episodes like the alleged British terrorism plot play to their favor.
“If the Republican Party thinks that this is going to be a good political issue for them, they’re mistaken,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the committee that sets Democratic strategy for Senate campaigns. “We are going to answer them immediately.”
The DSCC pushed a “blistering” memo hard to political reporters yesterday blasting Cheney for connecting the Connecticut Dem primary with the wishes of “Al Qaeda types” when he knew about the terrorist plot that was about to be foiled. Harry Reid said it was “disgraceful” that Cheney used such rhetoric while knowing what was about to transpire in Britain. “There are simply no boundaries for these people,” Reid said in an e-mail to supporters and activists. “In their minds, our national security and their continued hold on power are one and the same. And they will stop at nothing to keep it that way.”
Reid’s note went on to say he’d had it with the Republicans’ “cruel joke” on the politics of terrorism.
“During the 2002 and 2004 elections, Republicans tried to sow fear in the American public by claiming that they were the only ones who could keep America safe,” Reid wrote. “This from the same crowd that has driven Iraq to the brink of disaster, left Osama bin Laden on the loose to attack again, and continues to ignore our security needs at home. Ask any foreign policy pro, and they’ll tell you we’re less safe now than we were five years ago — and that the Bush crowd is largely responsible.”
And, as we discussed yesterday, the Dems were justifiably apoplectic about Rudy Giuliani’s letter for the RNC, hoping to exploit terrorism as a fundraising gimmick, sent out just a few hours after the nation learned about the thwarted plot.
In all, I’d say Dems are stepping up to the plate, finally. The party has already made gains in improving its public standing on national security, thanks in large part to Republican incompetence. Now, Dems are taking the next step.
It’s encouraging, to put it mildly.