Shaheen distances herself from Obama’s handling of ISIS

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) on Wednesday tried to distance herself from an unpopular president and his approach to battling Islamic terrorists in the Middle East.

“Do not believe ISIL is ‘manageable,’ agree these terrorists must be chased to the ‘gates of hell,’ ” Shaheen tweeted shortly after Vice President Biden endorsed her bid for reelection at the Navy shipyard in Portsmouth, N.H.

{mosads}Biden opened his speech by noting the recent killing of two American journalists by fighters with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and said the U.S. would follow the group “to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice, because hell is where they will reside.” ISIL is another name for the extremist group.

Earlier in the day Wednesday, speaking in Estonia, President Obama said the U.S. must “degrade and destroy” ISIS, then later said America should work with the international community to reduce the group’s “sphere of influence” and make it a “manageable problem.”

Shaheen faces a likely challenge from former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R) and is working to distance herself from the president.

Shaheen and Brown are within 2 percentage points of each other, 46 percent and 44 percent, respectively, according to the latest poll by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center for WMUR released Aug. 21. Other polls, however, have shown Shaheen with a larger lead. 

Obama’s approval among likely voters in New Hampshire is at 37 percent in the survey. Shaheen’s popularity among that group is 92 percent. And Brown’s approval is 71 percent among the voters there who disapprove of the president.

Brown has also used the president’s handling of ISIS to gain popularity. On Wednesday, his campaign released a 30-second video online titled “No Strategy,” highlighting the president’s comment last week that the administration doesn’t “have a strategy yet” to combat ISIS in Syria.

The video labels the Obama administration a “foreign policy failure.”

In a letter last week to Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Shaheen noted the effectiveness of recent U.S. airstrikes in Iraq against the group but called for the U.S. to go further and “disrupt and stop the flow of money and foreign fighters to” ISIS.

Former state Sen. Jim Rubens (R), who trails by 14 points in a matchup against Shaheen in the Aug. 21 poll, tweeted in response to Shaheen, “haphazard table thumping not a security policy,” noting she voted last year for a Senate committee resolution “to bomb Syria and strengthen ISIS.”