Via Alex Griswold, who cites a new Rasmussen poll showing that 56 percent of Democrats — Democrats — think we’re at war with “radical Islamic terrorism.” I’ve played this three times and still can’t believe I’m watching an ad from the Democratic Party pointing at George W. Bush as a role model on how to think about terrorism. The punchline is, Bush himself mentioned “radical Islam” in his presidential rhetoric; he even used it in the State of the Union, for cripes sake. He used the adjective “radical” because he wanted to suggest a distinction between “real” Islam and the version preached by jihadis — which is the same thing the Republican candidates featured in the ad are doing. It’s these DNC imbeciles, not the GOPers in the ad, who are effectively equating Islam with “radical Islam” by refusing to acknowledge the distinction. And the weirdest part, as Griswold says, is that if they wanted to show Republican suspicion of Muslims, they could have just stitched together some comments lately about barring Syrian Muslim refugees from the country. How come they didn’t do that? Is it because … a lot of Democratic voters agree with the GOP on that too?

Great timing, too:

Literally any other time of the year, voters might have just rolled their eyes at the unbearable PC-ness of it all. But the DNC ad comes after a series of major terrorist attacks across the globe… and after President Barack Obama gave a speech in response that left the impression that he was more fired up about attacking his domestic critics than taking on ISIS. To attack Republicans for “inciting fear” about radical Islam in the wake of nonstop news about radical Islamic terror is just an unbelievable misfire.

I think what happened here is that someone at the DNC decided that they needed to have Princess’s back after a week of him scolding Republicans about their insensitivity and so one especially dim liberal ad man was tasked with throwing something together. “Put George Bush in there,” he was told. “He always used to say ‘Islam means peace.’ He was such a good example.” This is a guy whom their base thought was some sort of new Hitler, and now they’re holding him out as an exemplar of … how not to incite fear. Am I awake?