Mirandizing terrorists inhibits intelligence collection? Wrong. Charging a terrorist in criminal court is a danger? Hundreds have been convicted that way. Non-torturous methods of interrogation fail? They work better. Call the Obama team pussies and they’ll back down? They’ll smack the tartar off your teeth. The public will rally around Republicans if they just ignorantly yell OMG TERRORISM loud enough? They’ll go to the other guy.
There’s just nothing left. […] [T]he GOP, for the first time in decades, is completely discredited on national security, without any credible spokespeople.
Spencer Ackerman, who’s right about everything except for his implicit assertion that the public understands this in any kind of durable way. Without continual, drumbeat messaging they will soon forget and fall back on the MSM trope that only the GOP can be trusted with Our National Security. It’s just too pervasive a frame, and one that has been repeated so relentlessly, explicitly and implicitly, for decades to the point that, like gravity, it’s just there, and not even noticed when invoked. You can’t and won’t undo that overnight. See: health insurance reform and government takeover of, subhead Death Panels. Democrats just don’t do this idea of “messaging” very well, if at all. I’m seriously not yet convinced they are aware of it as a concept.
Lemkin 