Charlie Brown and The Football...

...as an analogy for the Democrats and National Security? John McIntyre on RealClearPolitics makes the case:

One would think that after the political miscalculations the Democrats made during the 2002 and 2004 campaigns they would not make the same mistake a third time, but it is beginning to look a lot like Charlie Brown and the football again.
First, the Democrats still do not grasp that foreign affairs and national security issues are their vulnerabilities, not their strengths. All of the drumbeat about Iraq, spying, and torture that the left thinks is so damaging to the White House are actually positives for the President and Republicans. Apparently, Democrats still have not fully grasped that the public has profound and long-standing concerns about their ability to defend the nation.

Mr. McIntyre suggests the combination of their rabidly left-wing base and a chorus of yes-men in the media have helped wrap the Democrats into their own personal echo chamber - true enough, I am sure, but nevertheless each man/women whom votes/speaks in Congress is responsible for their own actions and any repercussions those actions may cause (hear me, Mr. Murtha?).

And while 9/11 has certainly faded in the consciousness for most in Washington these days (and for many in the country as a whole), for average Joe American security is still a critically important issue. And the bottom line is that average Americans’ sympathies are not with terrorists trying to kill innocents, but rather with our troops and security agents who are trying to combat these jihadists.

For Washington Democrats, 9/11 never exisited as any more than a detour to push their left-wing agenda around. 9/11 has not faded in MY consciousness; and I remember well the Democrats acting like traffic cops while the rubble still smoldered... "nothing to see here, folks! The real crime is that all these dead Americans may not have had full health care coverage! Let's move along, folks - pay no attention to the cries of the dying; we have a perscription drug plan for you!"

Here's the true pulse of America (hey- I speak with folks all across the country on a daily basis; unlike those whom communicate strictly between those in New York and DC - and this is the general vibe):

The public resents the overkill from Abu Ghraib and the hand-wringing over whether captured terrorists down in Gitmo may have been mistreated. They want Kahlid Mohamed, one of the master minds of 9/11 and a top bin Laden lieutanent, to be water-boarded if our agents on the ground think that is what necessary to get the intel we need. They want the CIA to be aggressively rounding up potential terrorists worldwide and keeping them in “black sites” in Romania or Poland or wherever, because the public would rather have suspected terrorists locked away in secret prisons in Bulgaria than plotting to kill Americans in Florida or California or New York.
The public also has the wisdom to understand that when you are at war mistakes will be made...

A wisdom that the Dems do not have, or worse, are aware of but will ignore in order to damage the nation's commander-in-chief. So how does it look outside the Beltway?

One of the major problems working against Democrats is many on their side appear to be rooting for failure in Iraq and publicly ridicule the idea that we actually might win. When this impression is put in context of the debate over eavesdropping or the Patriot Act, Democrats run the significant risk of being perceived to be more concerned with the enemy’s rights than protecting ordinary Americans.

It's not a perception. It is reality. And a sad one at that.

Link to the full post here: http://realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-12_19_05_JM.html