GOP Uses Terror Threats As Campaign Issue Against Democrats

[Webster]

AP-Yahoo News: GOP uses terror threat against Dems in campaign
Excerpt...

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the latest Republican campaign ad, a lone militant walks across a barren land with the black banner of the Islamic State group. It's part of the GOP move to cast Democrats as weak on terrorism.

Six weeks to Election Day, the once back-burner issue of national security is suddenly at the forefront amid rising American fears and the U.S. military's expanded campaign to destroy extremists in Iraq and Syria. The GOP, more trusted by the public in recent national polls to deal with foreign policy and terrorism, is using the threat as a political cudgel against Democratic House and Senate candidates.

"Radical Islamic terrorists are threatening to cause the collapse of our country," Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator trying to unseat first-term Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, says in a commercial. "President Obama and Sen. Shaheen seem confused about the nature of the threat. Not me."

A national Republican ad against two-term Rep. Dan Maffei, D-N.Y., calls him "dangerously wrong for our security" over black-and-white images of extremists. Another National Republican Congressional Committee ad describes Rep. Rick Nolan, D-Minn., as "dangerously liberal."

National security rarely decides elections, especially congressional races, and jobs and the economy remain the overriding issue for voters this year. The GOP effort is part of a broader approach of linking Democrats to an unpopular President Barack Obama, whose approval ratings on handling foreign policy and dealing with terrorism have plummeted since U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Just 41 percent approve of Obama's handling of terrorism while 50 percent disapprove, according to last week's New York Times/CBS poll, which gave the president worse marks than Republican President George W. Bush in 2006. At the same time, Republicans had a hefty double-digit advantage of 52-31 percent on the question of which party is more trusted in dealing with terrorism and a 49-37 percent edge on foreign policy.

...this ain't the first time the Republicans have done this and probably won't be the last either...thoughts?