As November approaches, Republicans are seizing on the Middle East as
a valuable opportunity for some fear campaigning:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a new TV commercial that opens with a brief clip of an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militant firing a weapon, with the narrator intoning that “these are serious times.” In New Hampshire, Senate candidate Scott Brown is out with a Web ad that plays President Barack Obama’s ill-spoken “We don’t have a strategy yet” line and brands the president a foreign policy “failure.” And last weekend, Iowa Senate hopeful Joni Ernst, in a speech to fellow veterans, bemoaned “the president’s inability or unwillingness to present a strategy aimed at eradicating the growing threat” of ISIL.
While Republicans are falling over themselves to attack the president, though, one thing you won't hear much of is actual, concrete ideas from them, ideas that they'll go so far as bringing up for a vote. Rep. Jack Kingston recently offered this plain, honest explanation for
why that is:
“It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long.”
But you don't need to have a plan, let alone one that Americans would embrace, to run an ad attacking Obama, so ... yay! Republicans across the nation, rejoice. And play on the fears of Americans who've watched a beheading video, and imply that there's a simple answer that won't lead to more years of war. You know, the Republican playbook.
Obama is speaking on his ISIL/ISIS plans Wednesday evening at 9 PM EDT; Daily Kos will be liveblogging the speech.