A new ad from Thom Tillis wants you to be afraid. If you didn't get the hint from the ominous drumming, this moment near the end of the ad should erase all doubt.



Source: YouTube

In the ad, the Republican challenger attacks Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) for missing half of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings in 2014. "While ISIS grew, Obama kept waiting, and Kay Hagan kept quiet," the narrator intones.

In other words, add failing to recognize the growing specter of the Islamic State to the list of ways in which GOP candidates are tying their Democratic opponents to President Obama. And Tillis isn't the first to do so.

New Hampshire Senate candidate and former senator Scott Brown said in an ad last week that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Obama were both "confused" about the threat posed by the Islamic State.

A previous effort from Brown featured even more frightening images.

Allen Weh, who will (probably) lose to incumbent Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), ran an ad calling Udall and Obama soft on terror, going so far as to use footage from the video of journalist James Foley's beheading.

And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) knocked Obama's handling of the Islamic State.

And really, it was only a matter of time. Basically every ad from a GOP Senate candidate has, in one way or another, tried to connect the White House to Democratic candidates on issues like healthcare, energy and the economy. Foreign policy is simply next in line.

And it could prove a fruitful strategy. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll from early this month, more registered voters disapprove of Obama's handling of international affairs than his handling of health care or the economy. A majority of registered voters also found the president too cautious in his response to the Sunni insurgents, and international affairs writ large. Ninety-two percent of voters think that the Islamic State represents a serious threat.

Opinions on health care and the economy have grown muddled amid less bad news about Obamacare and slow-but-steady economic progress. But the debate over foreign policy has given GOP campaigns a new way to cast Obama as the hapless commander in chief -- and on an issue that can energize the GOP base as well as give pause to independents and moderate Democrats. The fear of terrorism, after all, tends to get people to pay attention.

However, it's important to note that these ads aren't really about foreign policy -- at least, at their core. Like basically every other Republican Senate ad that predates them, they are all about giving voters and challengers the opportunity to shake their head at Obama, without getting bogged down in how the GOP alternatives would do things differently. It's more "vote against Obama" than "vote for my alternative" -- which is how many midterms elections wind up getting framed.

The United States, after all, is currently launching airstrikes in the Middle East which are supported by the vast majority of voters and by many of these Republican challengers. In Tillis's ad blasting Hagan and Obama, he says that foreign policy needs to change direction, but gives no indication of which way. Brown says he wants to "restore America's leadership in the world" but fails to enlighten us in how a New Hampshire senator would be able to fulfill this ambitious goal. (Brown does say he would increase border security to prevent terrorists from getting into the United States.)

Indeed, very few Republicans have offered a different approach than what Obama is doing in Iraq and Syria. Among those who have, they've called for a more hawkish policy.

Which is something candidates in tough races haven't been willing to embrace, for pretty obvious reasons.