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How can you tell the difference between an honest disagreement based on principles and a disingenuous squabble manufactured for political gain?
Some Republicans have made spotting the latter all too easy.
Shortly after the failed Christmas Day terror plot to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253, President Obamas critics blasted him for being weak on terrorism. Their major complaint? It took an informed president three days after the attack to address the nation.
Yet these same critics were silent when shoe bomber Richard Reid, a self-admitted member of al-Qaida, tried to blow up an American Airlines jet just three months after 9/11, and President George W. Bush said nothing about it for six days. And when Bush did speak, he uttered this at a news conference: A stewardess on an American Airlines flight or a flight attendant on an American Airlines flight was vigilant, saw something amiss and responded. Its an indication that the culture of America has shifted to one of alertness, and Im grateful for the flight attendants response, as Im sure (are) the passengers on that airplane.
Republicans, implying that Obama is soft on terrorists, have gone on air to complain that so-called underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should be tried as an enemy combatant in a military court, contrary to their previous support for having Reid, in accordance with U.S. law, tried as a criminal in federal court when Bush was president.
This blatant hypocrisy is outmatched only by the despicable decision some politicians made to use our national security as a political football for partisan gain and fundraising purposes.
Just days after Abdulmutallabs failed attack, U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (a Michigan gubernatorial candidate) fired off a fundraising e-mail bashing the administration. They just dont get it, he ranted. The system didnt work here. Far from it! ... If you agree that we need a Governor who will stand up to the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security please make a most generous contribution of $25, $50, $100 or even $250 to my campaign.
And the National Republican Senatorial Committee circulated this fundraising e-mail to donors: (T)his country was one faulty detonator away from an American airliner being blown out of the sky, wrote NRSC Executive Director Rob Jesmer. He ended his appeal by cleverly using the word check : Now more than ever we need a check in the Senate to stop the radical Obama agenda down until we elect a Republican President in 2012.
Can you imagine what would have happened if a liberal politician had tried to profit from an attempted terrorist attack? Yet such crass opportunism seems acceptable to a hopelessly desperate political minority anxious to hold power once again.
I admit that a part of me envies the Republicans sheep-like conformity and obedience. Getting Democrats to toe the party line is like herding cats into a bag. I sometimes fantasize about how the health care debate would have turned out if Democratic Party members moved in lockstep like their counterparts across the aisle. But my fantasy ends when I remember how thin the line is between marching in lockstep and goose-stepping.
In short, we have to stop politicians who play games with our national security for their own shortsighted political security.
If these opportunists are allowed to continue their attempts to govern by permanent polarization and division, then we as a nation will suffer the shattering consequences of President Abraham Lincolns warning: At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. ... If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
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