Let me start with a basic premise. Trends in political rhetoric often have a well-defined and clear beginning point, but no such distinct ending point. The trend to emphasize a national response to terrorism obviously began right after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the Republicans made far more out of it than the Democrats. Fighting terrorism, and stretching that to justify two large wars in the Middle East, was the dominant theme of Republican rhetoric for years. Just think back to this point in the last presidential election cycle. The Republicans were all obsessed with jostling to be seen as the toughest on terrorism. “I’ll keep Gautanamo Bay open!” “Oh yeah, well I’ll double its size!!” That sort of thing occurred in every debate.
Today the Republican candidates seem totally silent on the topic of terrorism. They may be saying things about it, for all I know, but they’re certainly not pushing the topic to the forefront of their campaigns. It becomes all the more notable when one considers that some of the candidates in this cycle were also candidates in that cycle. Seems to me that terrorism, as a rhetorical device in American politics, has run its course and is now a goner.
It’s too convenient an enemy for either American political party to give up.
Well, that plus the tendency to throw ridiculous amounts of blame discourages rational attempts to downplay the significance of terrorism. A candidate who vows to restore sanity to, say, the TSA screening process, will be called a criminal accomplice if anyone even tries (let alone succeeds) to attack an airline, even if current TSA screening wouldn’t have stopped the attack at all. I’d kinda like to see a politician brave enough to admit “well, terrorism is like crime and lightning strikes - they’re gonna happen and though we can take steps to minimize the damage, trying to eliminate them entirely is unfeasible so let approach the problem rationally”, but I suspect such a politician will get called a secret Muslim with a never-ending drive to feast on baby eyeballs in the press.
A thousand false positives get shrugged off - innocent people sent to jail, toddlers pulled out of line for “special screening” - but one false negative is seen as unforgivable.
No. It’s just less important as a rhetorical device than the economy. However, cuts will be made to the US Budget. One of those will be military. Nothing like staving off spending cuts to the military like threats of attack. So terrorism might get intermingled (rhetorically) with the economy and budget cuts.
Also, watch the 2012 NDAA. Both the House and Senate Bills are working their way through. In a nutshell, the detainee provisions attempt “re-up” the detention authority given to the President via the Authority to Use Military Force from 2001 (i.e., indefinite detention still ok). I imagine that should get some airtime and the usual political arguments for and against.
Republicans aren’t going to say much about terrorism right now, because doing so would play into Obama’s hands: The bin Laden raid, and Obama’s role in it, is regarded very positively by the public. It makes much more sense to focus their attacks where he’s vulnerable, namely, the economy.
Also, most of the terrorists affecting America right now are white right-wing people killing people at holocaust museums and shooting abortion doctors and planning to blow up senators and killing cops and trying to blow up Martin Luther King Day parades and so on.
I don’t think the Republicans want to make too big a deal about that. Somehow.
Maybe, maybe not. It’s worth noting that in the long term, Republicans have not been particularly demanding in their response to terrorism. There were many terrorist attacks against Americans both at home and abroad during the 80’s and 90’s, yet the Republicans did not choose to use that as the cornerstone of their political strategy. During the 90’s, in particular, they suggested that Clinton’s attacks against Al Queda were intended merely to distract attention away from the sex scandal. I think we could very well be returning to that state of affairs. 9/11 is fading from people’s memories and the last thing Republicans want to do is remind the voters of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. (Or even of the Bush administration’s existence.)