Return of the wimp factor?

posted at 10:24 am on September 7, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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In his acceptance speech at Invesco Field, Barack Obama insisted that Democratic presidents could keep America safe, but couldn’t come up with an example more recent than 45 years ago.  While Obama invoked FDR and JFK, voters apparently began thinking of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.  The wimp factor has returned with a vengeance according to a new poll, and Democrats now find themselves back to their 2004 status on national security:

One of the most notable polling results at the time of the 2006 elections was that Democrats had closed the national-security gap versus Republicans who held a long and significant advantage in that area. That was short-lived.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the gap has reopened. Democrats are regaining the reputation with voters as wimps.

Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner has just released a survey that indicates that voters perceive Republicans once again as far and away better on national security issues than Democrats.

Forty nine percent of those surveyed thought Republicans were better on national security while 35 percent thought Democrats better. When it came to combating terrorism, 48 percent thought Republicans superior to Democrats while 33 percent gave Democrats the advantage.

Why has this returned so suddenly?  It’s not difficult to fathom.  Democrats spent the two years following that election attempting to lose the war in Iraq, and most still haven’t acknowledged their error in doing so.  Harry Reid, the Democratic leader of the Senate, declared the war lost from the chamber’s floor.  Barack Obama only admitted a few days ago what the rest of the nation figured out last September — that the surge worked and we have all but won the Iraq war.

Obama has tried mightily to shift attention away from his blunder on the surge, but it hasn’t worked.  He has demanded more troops in Afghanistan, as John McCain also has, without explaining why a surge would work in Afghanistan but didn’t in Iraq.  His running mate couldn’t tell the difference between a brigade and a battalion three separate times in the two weeks since joining the ticket.  Meanwhile, his Code Pink bundler, Jodie Davis, crashed the Republican convention and had to be forcefully removed on national television.

Most of the trouble comes from Obama himself.  He announced during the July 2007 YouTube debate that he would meet with the leaders of terrorist-financing states like Iran and Venezuela “without preconditions”, an absurd statement his campaign has tried to walk back for months without success.  Obama pledged to cut missile-defense and weapons systems as soon as he got elected.  When Russia invaded Georgia, Obama couldn’t distinguish between victim and victimizer and demanded restraint from a nation attempting to defend its own territory.

With a record like this, no one should be surprised at all that voters see Democrats as wimps.  When a candidate has to reach back five decades to find a President that understood national security, it speaks volumes about the direction of their party ever since.

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