This statement from GOP chairman Ken Mehlman is just ridiculous.
Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, declared Friday that Democrats who have condemned the Bush administration’s controversial eavesdropping program may not be suited to safeguard Americans against terror attacks.
“We do not and we never should question these Democrat leaders’ patriotism, but we do question their judgment and we do question their ability to keep the American people safe,” he said. “These are people we know love their country, the question is: Can they protect it?”
Let’s go to the evidence (see here, here and here for details). Maybe Mehlman can explain to me exactly how these statements don’t question Democrats’ patriotism:
Attorney General John Ashcroft (December 2001): “To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.”
Rep. Tom Davis (February 2002): Tom Daschle’s “divisive comments [alleging a lack of success in the war on terror] have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies by allowing them to exploit divisions in our country.”
White House communications director Dan Bartlett (May 2002): Democratic questions about warnings President Bush received before 9/11 “are exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do.”
Senator Orrin Hatch (September 2004): Democrats are “consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving” in Iraq.
Rep. Geoff Davis (November 2005): “[T]he liberal leadership have put politics ahead of sound, fiscal and national security policy. And what they have done is cooperated with our enemies and are emboldening our enemies.”
Speaker Dennis Hastert (December 2005): Howard Dean’s statement that “The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong,” according to Hastert, “made it clear the Democratic Party sides with those who wish to surrender.”
GOP chairman Ken Mehlman (December 2005): Dean’s statement “sends the wrong message to our troops, the wrong message to the enemy, the wrong message to the Iraqi people.”
President Bush (January 2006): “[The American people] know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.
Other than that, Mehlman is right on target!
Postscript: The GOP chairman also repeated one of the most disingenuous rhetorical questions in recent history:
“Do Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean really think that when NSA is listening in on terrorists planning attacks on America, they should hang up when those terrorists call their sleeper cells in the United States?” he said, referring to the House minority leader and the Democratic National Committee chairman.
As I said before, Pelosi and Dean don’t want NSA to “hang up” when terrorists call sleeper cells in the US; they want NSA to get a warrant.