McConnell’s new TV commercial has a narrator intoning that 'these are serious times.' GOP seizes on Mideast mayhem

Mayhem in the Middle East is suddenly taking center stage in the midterm elections.

In campaigns across the country, Republicans are seizing on what they call the Obama administration’s feckless response to Islamic State militants as part of a broader case to voters to turn against Democrats in November. Their argument: Barack Obama is a disengaged figure whose power needs to be checked.


Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a new TV commercial that opens with a brief clip of an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militant firing a weapon, with the narrator intoning that “these are serious times.” In New Hampshire, Senate candidate Scott Brown is out with a Web ad that plays President Barack Obama’s ill-spoken “We don’t have a strategy yet” line and brands the president a foreign policy “failure.” And last weekend, Iowa Senate hopeful Joni Ernst, in a speech to fellow veterans, bemoaned “the president’s inability or unwillingness to present a strategy aimed at eradicating the growing threat” of ISIL.

While foreign affairs has taken a back seat this midterm election to economic issues and lingering dissatisfaction with Obamacare, ISIL — and the ongoing questions about the president’s strategy for dealing with it — plays neatly into what is the central GOP 2014 thrust: to exploit widespread public dissatisfaction with a president who, six years into his tenure, is facing mounting questions about his leadership.

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“I think it’s something you’ll see quite a bit of this fall,” said Greg Strimple, a Republican pollster who is working on a number of races this year. “I think the reason it’s a potent issue is because it speaks to a lack of presidential leadership, and the lack of leadership is becoming a character issue for the president.”

McConnell’s ad may provide the clearest blueprint of how Republicans will use the issue moving forward, casting the Republican senator as a steady leader at a time of unrest domestically and overseas. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, the minority leader said the debate over ISIL “is the first time anything outside the borders of the United States has come up in my campaign.”

The president is set to outline his plan to defeat ISIL in a prime-time address Wednesday night, and Democrats are eager to see him reverse the damage from his remark two weeks ago that he did not have a strategy for dealing with the militants in Syria. Increasingly, candidates are being peppered back home about the barbaric images they’re seeing on TV emanating from the group. How Obama’s speech is publicly received could determine whether the GOP criticism on the campaign trail has staying power during the final weeks of the campaign or amounts to a blip in the larger battle for Congress.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic majority whip who is up for reelection this year, said the debate over ISIL was “bound to have some impact” on the midterms, given how close the November elections are. And he said the president needs to clean up the mess he created with his “strategy” comment.

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“He stumbled at the outset,” Durbin said in an interview. “That was very poorly handled. I think he knows it. I think the speech this week is to clarify that we do have a strategy and that we have allies in the effort.”

Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the country, said Obama failed to deal with the unrest in Syria last summer, causing the problems with ISIL today. He set a high bar for Obama to clear in his ISIL speech.

Republican operatives who’ve spent months poring over polling data say public awareness of ISIL — and fears of it — have intensified exponentially in recent weeks. A CNN poll out Monday found that 90 percent believe ISIL poses a threat to the homeland, and that 71 percent believe the group has terrorists living in the U.S.

“It’s popping up in a lot of places. It’s not a manufactured thing,” said Rob Jesmer, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director. “ISIL is in the American bloodstream right now, people are aware of it and talking about it.”

As they use the issue to raise questions about the president’s leadership, Republicans are driving the point home by describing the threat in especially dark terms. Arkansas Rep. Tom Cotton, a veteran who’s locked in a competitive Senate race against Democrat Mark Pryor, recently told a Chamber of Commerce audience that ISIL presents a “greater danger” than Al Qaeda in the days before it executed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes.

The issue was a hot topic at a closed-door Senate GOP lunch on Tuesday in the LBJ room just off the floor. “[George W.] Bush’s foreign policy mistakes sure didn’t help Republicans — so why would we expect any different?” said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a defense hawk up for reelection this year.

The most dramatic — and criticized — use of ISIL in a campaign was in New Mexico. Allen Weh, a Republican Senate candidate, has begun running a Web commercial juxtaposing images of a knife-wielding ISIL fighter just prior to the beheading of war photographer James Foley next to a vacationing Obama. The campaign of Weh’s opponent, Democratic Sen. Tom Udall, called the ad “reprehensible and appalling.”

For some Republicans, highlighting ISIL isn’t just about striking a contrast with an unpopular president. Some, like Ernst, are finding that talking about ISIL also allows them to remind voters that they once wore their country’s uniform. Others, like New York congressional candidate Lee Zeldin, are using it as an opportunity to call for increased border security, another issue that has taken on a big role in the 2014 debate.

The approach has potential pitfalls, however, inviting difficult questions about what the Republicans would do about the threat. In their new advertisements, the GOP candidates have criticized the president, but have been careful to avoid calling for putting military troops on the ground to combat ISIL, an option that remains unpopular with a war-weary American public. The CNN poll found three-quarters of Americans in favor of launching airstrikes against ISIL, but only 38 percent supported using ground troops.

Talking about ISIL might have other dangers, as Mark Greenberg, a Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut, has learned.

On Friday, his campaign sent out an email that memorialized journalist Steven Sotloff, who was also beheaded by ISIL and attended a boarding school in the state. The email excoriated Obama for his approach regarding the terrorist group, an approach that Greenberg called a “failure.” At the bottom of the email was a “contribute” button soliciting financial support for the Republican’s campaign.

Greenberg’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Elizabeth Esty, pounced.

“Using this barbaric terrorist act to solicit campaign donations,” she said in her own campaign email a few hours later, “is appalling.”