Republican Advantage on Issue Of National Security Erodes
online.wsj.com
Iraq and Handling of Katrina Shift Sentiment as Races
For Congress Heat Up
By JACKIE CALMES
September 1, 2006
In both national elections since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush and congressional Republicans successfully played the national-security card to win big victories against the odds. Now, with their party's control of Congress at stake, Republicans are betting on the issue again. But it may not be the trump card it used to be.
The public's patience has frayed as the Iraq war grows bloodier in its fourth year, eroding confidence in Mr. Bush's stewardship of national security. Mismanagement of the response to Hurricane Katrina contributed. Democrats, having ceded the security issue to Republicans in the past, now are on the offensive. They're attacking the administration's competence at home and abroad and fielding candidates with military experience.
Democrats are also pressing an argument opposite to the president's: that Iraq isn't central to the broader war on terror but distracts from it, and breeds more terrorists. How voters ultimately decide on that issue is "one of the most important dynamics of this election," says Republican pollster David Winston.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in June, buttressed by other polls since, suggested Democrats have gained significant ground. It gave them a three-point advantage on the question of which party can best deal with Iraq, erasing Republicans' 30-point edge of October 2002. Democrats had a nine-point edge on handling foreign policy, a swing from Republicans' 18-point advantage in June 2002. Republicans did retain a 24-point advantage on "ensuring a strong national defense" -- though that was down from a high of 41 points just before 9/11.
The intensifying debate was on full display in Salt Lake City yesterday, where Mr. Bush set the theme for what will be a sustained pre-election push to make the Republicans' case on national security. He told the American Legion's national convention that leaving Iraq now would be "absolutely disastrous," providing a base of operations for global terrorists who are "successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians" the veterans helped battle. Back in Washington, the Republican National Committee struck a new political note, with a widely distributed email against Democrats titled "The Defeatocrat Playbook."
A laboratory for how that fight plays out is suburban Philadelphia. Ten-term Republican Rep. Curt Weldon, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, is running his toughest re-election campaign yet, with full-throated support for the Iraq war. "We either fight them there," Mr. Weldon recently said of terrorists, "or we fight them in the supermarkets and streets here." He still insists there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Stuart Rothenberg, a veteran nonpartisan handicapper of congressional races, recently rated Mr. Weldon's a tossup. The Democratic challenger is Joe Sestak, a former vice admiral who served in Afghanistan. Two weeks ago, Democratic leaders tapped him to deliver the party's weekly response to Mr. Bush's Saturday radio address. Mr. Sestak charged that the administration, by its attention to Iraq, had ignored Iran "as it developed a nuclear capability," as well as North Korea, "now launching missiles." Recalling his own stint in Afghanistan, he said that country now "is in danger of once again falling prey to terrorists." And the alleged terrorist plot in London, Mr. Sestak added, "forces us to ask: Are we doing everything possible to make America safe?"
Against this backdrop, Labor Day kicks off the candidates' traditional sprint to Election Day, Nov. 7, with Republicans increasingly fretful at the prospect of losing their House, and possibly Senate, majorities. Polls since last year have shown the public's approval ratings for Mr. Bush and the Republican-led Congress at historic lows. Voters by low double-digit margins continue to say they'd prefer Democrats to run Congress.
Even most Republicans see little ahead that could change the picture for the better. As usual, they have more money to make their case, but Democrats have narrowed the gap. Republicans are spending millions to defend seats they thought would be safe, leaving them strapped for helping their challengers running against Democratic incumbents.
By all accounts, Republicans will suffer net losses. Both Mr. Rothenberg and Charlie Cook, another respected political analyst, now predict that Democrats will gain at least the 15 seats they need to control the House, based on current trends. That likely would mean defeats for some of the few remaining Republican moderates from New England across the Middle West. They are vulnerable this year, by association with an unpopular president and congressional leadership, among less-conservative voters who feel neither safer nor economically secure. Most analysts expect Democrats to fall short of the six-seat gain they need for a Senate majority, given that Republicans have fewer seats than Democrats to defend this year.
Many factors have combined to turn the tables against the party in power: worsening chaos and casualties in Iraq, economic insecurity and high gasoline prices, congressional corruption, conservatives mutinous about Republicans' spending record, and an anti-incumbent mood this year that gives the majority more to lose.
Republicans are left with one remaining strong suit -- voters' sense, going back a half-century to the Cold War against communism, that they are better able than Democrats to keep the nation secure.
"It's still an enormously potent issue" for Republicans, says party strategist and former Rep. Vin Weber. His party's historical advantage on national security is the wild card, he argues, that makes these midterm elections less predictable than in years past -- such as 1994, when Republicans broke Democrats' 40-year domination of Congress amid voters' disgust with Democrats' unkept promises on domestic issues, or 1974, when Democrats swept scores of Republicans from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal. |
