Apparently I'm Pro Terror

With the British arrests last week and the response to Lamont's upset over Joementum, it is clear that the Bush Admninistration and the Republican Party have officially kicked off their 2006 midterm election campaign. The message? The Democrats will help the terrorists win. Not only that, but the terrorists are "waiting for the Democrats here to take control, let things cool off and then strike again." Republicans have called Ned Lamont the "Al Qaeda candidate". It is clear that the Republicans hope to keep terrorism at the top of the public consciousness and once again falsely tie Iraq into it even though the claim that there was any relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda has been widely discredited. In one sense it's working. Terrorism has moved up 10 points in the last month in importance to the public.

This is a cynical attack, and a dishonest campaign strategy, but the American public fell for it in its more subtle forms in 2002 and 2004, hopefully now 5 years removed from 9/11 it won't play, and clearly the Republican Party feels the need to really lay it on, not even being subtle anymore. They are now directly tying the Democrats to terrorism and overtly suggesting that any opposition to the President on Iraq emboldens the terrorists. Clearly the public is less inclined to accept this than before, the Republicans saw no need to be quite this over the top in the past, hopefully the outright absurdity of the argument that the GOP is currently engaged in will shine through to the public so that this kind of fearmongering tactic will be soundly rejected in 2006.