| If this report in the New York Post isn't taking Hillary Clinton's statement out of context - and, as a Murdoch paper, there's plenty of reason to think that it did - Clinton just repeated a false conservative-bred traditional media meme: Republicans are better on national security.
The relevant paragraphs:
Discussing the possibility of a new nightmare assault while campaigning in New Hampshire, Clinton also insisted she is the Democratic candidate best equipped to deal with it.
"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," Clinton told supporters in Concord.
"So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that," she added.
That's why conservative crazies are practically begging for domestic terror attacks. They think a good slaughter at America's Mall, say, would put them right back into the driver's seat.
Only thing is, it's not true that Americans think the GOP is better on national security. In an August 1 Rasmussen poll, it's the Democratic party voters trust more on national security issues, 42 to 40 percent. An August 21 Rasmussen poll reversed the numbers - 44 to 40 percent - trust Republicans more on the issue. In short, it's neck-and-neck.
What's true is that rhetoric from prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton only feeds into the media's implicit belief that Republicans are better suited to security. If a Democrat says that a Republican is better for an important job, voters will simply opt for the Republican -- even if the Democrat is implying that she's just as good as a Republican on that issue.
And in this case, the media meme is flat-out wrong. Republicans - at least Bush and his faithful Twenty Nine Percent -- have shown themselves completely incapable of manning a coherent national security policy. From 9/11 to Katrina to Iraq, this administration and its yes-men Congressional representatives have hamstrung our military capacity fighting an unwinnable and irrelevant war, while driving support to terrorist groups, and making the world a much less safer place. These Republicans are bad at wars, bad at diplomacy, bad at preparing for and dealing with domestic emergencies.
Matt Yglesias:
I think the Democrat best positioned to deal with GOP political mobilization in a post-attack environment is going to be the one who isn't reflexively inclined to see failed Republican policies resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Americans as a political advantage for the Republicans.
The other is that I think there's a pretty clear sense in which the further one is from Bush's Iraq policy, the easier it is politically to say that the failures of Bush's national security policy should be blamed on Bush's failed policies....Most of all, though, I think the politics of national security call for a strong, self-confident posture that genuinely believes liberal solutions are politically saleable and substantively workable, not the kind of worry-wort attitude that says we need to cower in fear every time Republicans say "terror."
And you wonder why Montana leftys think a Hillary Clinton nomination would destroy the state ticket. |
