Terrorism and Republican politics

Republicans don't play cheap politics with terrorism, do they? They wouldn't exploit the thwarted terror plot in Britain for the sake of grubby political opportunism, would they?

Yes and Yes. (Those are two of the easiest questions I've ever asked.)

Consider: "Democrats assailed the Republicans Friday for e-mailing a fundraising appeal mentioning the war on terror hours after British authorities disclosed they had disrupted a plot to blow up aircraft headed to the United States."

Republicans blamed "a low-level staffer," a typical scapegoat (as Steve Benen explains).

WaPo may be aiming at neutrality when it claims that "Democrats and Republicans alike rushed to invoke yesterday's terrorist scare in Britain in congressional campaigns," but it was Republicans, from Bush on down, who took the cheapest shots. They, not Democrats, exploit terrorism, and the threat thereof, whenever and wherever possible. With so much failure on their watch, and in the absence of any sort of domestic agenda, all they have left is the politics of fear (terrorists, gays, etc.).

The exception was Lieberman, who -- desperate, clinging to his political career by a thread -- shamelessly attacked Lamont. He said that Lamont's views would be "taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England". I didn't take sides in Lieberman-Lamont I, but such a stupid comment edges me closer to Lamont. But, then, like the Republicans to whom he is so close, Lieberman has virtually nothing left himself. Look for more of the same in Lieberman-Lamont II.

What else could explain Republican exploitation of terrorism? Low poll numbers, as Steve Soto suggests. Bush is down to 33 percent and Republicans trail Democrats by 18 points in a generic poll. Yes, "it must be time to gin up another terror threat, to bad-mouth the Democrats as weak on terror..." (See also DemFromCT at The Next Hurrah.)

It's just more of the same from the Republican Party we've come to know so well.