First there was Peggy Noonan — and now it’s becoming an emerging theme. Republicans are arguing a)Barack Obama is too incompetent to be trusted with going into Syria b)Syria would have listened to George W. Bush (who just so happens to have had an “R” in front his party affiliation) if he was President today.
#1. Republican Senator Jeff Sessions (insisting he’s not being partisan):
“I do believe if President Bush had told Bashar Assad ‘You don’t use those chemical weapons or you’re gonna be sorry, we’re coming after you, and this’ll be a consequence you will not want to bear,’ I don’t believe he would have used it.
#2. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer:
Charles Krauthammer joined Hugh Hewitt on his radio show to bash President Obama‘s strategy on Syria. Krauthammer said he wasn’t necessarily opposed to military action in Syria, but said, “The reason I’m for staying out is because this president doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
#3. Rush Limbaugh, whose rants on a major issue almost always somehow foreshadow how the kind of line the party eventually takes:
“Folks, the people of this country are lagging behind what the rest of the world thinks of Obama, I’m here to tell you… The American people are sort of a lagging indicator in coming to grips with Obama’s incompetence on things.”
It’s a major theme, now — and look for the GOP to try to use it to erase the gains Democrats made under Obama in being perceived as a party that was strong on national security issues. And use it in further battles with Obama. Could it work? If polls show that as a growing perception yes. And it could work for another reason: over the Edward Snowden revelations and now Syria the liberal wing of the Democratic party is not happy with Obama and Democrats have a long history of breaking with their own party. Which often means long lasting Republican election gains, when they can get in and put people who share their views in key positions in the judiciary.
How likely is that to happen? Right now the smart money is on Obama’s resolution not making it alive out of Congress, which would make him one of the most politically lame lame duck Presidents in decades. Not good news for Democrats heading into the mid-terms..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.