Thirteen years after the 9/11 attacks, the political climate is shaping up to be surprisingly the same.
After a few foreign policy wins for President Obama, a couple of difficult months, which saw new threats from Russia and the terrorist group ISIS develop, have completely undone whatever credibility the party had begun to build on the issue.
A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll gave Republicans an 18-point advantage on which party is seen as best handling foreign policy, an increase from just a 7-point advantage a year ago. And the poll also gave the GOP a 38-point lead on the question of which party ensures a strong national defense.
{mosads}That’s the GOP’s highest marks on the question in more than a decade.
The poll comes at a time when Americans are desperate for reassurance on foreign affairs. The same poll showed 47 percent of Americans believe the country is less safe now than before the 9/11 terrorist attacks — the highest percentage to say so since the attacks took place in 2001.
Where foreign policy helped doom the GOP in the 2006 midterms, the current cycle is shaping up to be more like 2002, when Republicans gained seats in both chambers as Americans grappled with new global threats.
SENATE SHOWDOWN
KY-SEN (MCCONNELL): A prominent Kentucky businessman contributed $10,200 to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s campaign four days after the Republican leader appointed him to a government commission tasked with tackling hunger.
AK-SEN (BEGICH): Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) listed the address of his Washington, D.C., home, rather than his Anchorage home on Federal Election Commission filings — a choice that could muddle attacks Begich has made on whether his opponent has close enough ties to the state.
IA-SEN (OPEN): First Lady Michelle Obama is heading to Iowa to help Rep. Bruce Braley’s (D-Iowa) Senate campaign.
NH-SEN (SHAHEEN): New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown warned on Fox News Thursday morning that Islamic militants could already be crossing the border into the United States, and said that the U.S. shouldn’t rule out putting ground troops in the Middle East to fight insurgents with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
NC-SEN (HAGAN): North Carolina Speaker Thom Tillis (R) is pointing to his work across the aisle to compensate victims of the state’s horrific eugenics program as he tries to take down Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.).
KS-SEN (ROBERTS): Independent Greg Orman is drawing scrutiny over a pair of lawsuits, one in which he sued actress Debbie Reynolds over an unpaid loan he made to her museum and another in which a boxing equipment manufacturer alleges he and others owe the company $30 million in payments.
Meanwhile, attorneys for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) filed their response to Democrat Chad Taylor’s suit seeking to remove himself from the Kansas Senate ballot this fall. And former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney cut a robocall for Sen. Pat Roberts (R).
BATTLE FOR THE HOUSE
AR-4 (OPEN): Former FEMA Administrator James Lee Witt, the Democrat running for Rep. Tom Cotton’s (R) seat, is facing a complaint from the state Republican Party for his failure to report an $850,000 home in his personal financial disclosure forms — a mistake, Witt’s campaign said, that it is amending its forms to fix.
MT-AL (OPEN): Former SEAL Team Six commander Ryan Zinke (R) is making a charge for Congress from Montana and said he intends to make his voice heard on foreign policy if elected. Zinke, who retired from the Navy a few years before his old team took out Osama bin Laden, sees much of his campaign through the lens of a former soldier, with a focus on national security and energy independence at the core of his campaign. He’s calling for ground troops back in Iraq.
FL-26 (GARCIA): Sen. Marco Rubio (R) endorsed Miami-Dade County School Board member Carlos Curbelo (R) in his contest with Rep. Joe Garcia (D), after sitting the GOP primary fight out.
AD WATCH
AK-SEN (BEGICH): The National Education Association says former Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan (R) “sold Alaska’s teachers out.”
WV-SEN (OPEN): Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) says that West Virginians “want to get government out of our lives” on education and healthcare.
NH-SEN (SHAHEEN): Republican Scott Brown frames the race as a contrast between Obama rubber stamp Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) and himself, saying if he’s elected he’d be an “independent senator that votes for New Hampshire first.”
IA-SEN (OPEN): The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee hit Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) for discussing privatizing Social Security and ties her to the billionaire Koch brothers in a new ad.
American Crossroads hits Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) for missing Veterans Affairs Committee hearings.
Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey (R) praises Ernst in a new ad from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
MN-8 (NOLAN): Republican Stewart Mills hits Rep. Rick Nolan (D-Minn.) as out of touch and “part of the problem.”
NY-24 (MAFFEI): Former federal prosecutor John Katko (R) features a student he mentors in his new ad. She says in the ad that she grew up “in a neighborhood most people try to avoid. But not John Katko. He went after the drug traffickers and violent gangs. He made our family safer. And John Katko’s been my personal mentor, inspiring me to pursue a career in criminal justice.”
MI-1 (BENISHEK): The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hit Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Mich.) for supporting replacing income tax with a national sales tax.
GA-12 (BARROW): Republican Rick Allen’s new spot attacks ObamaCare and President Obama, mostly ignoring Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.).
POLL POSITION
NBC/WSJ POLL: Voters prefer a GOP-controlled Congress by a 2-point margin in a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll — and that number jumps to 10 points among voters in the Senate battleground states.
GA-SEN (OPEN): Businessman David Perdue (R) leads former charity executive Michelle Nunn (D) 47 percent to 44 percent in a new poll from SurveyUSA.
NJ-SEN (BOOKER): A Fairleigh Dickinson University/PublicMind poll gives Sen. Cory Booker (D) 42 percent support to GOP strategist Jeff Bell’s 29 percent support among registered voters, with 27 percent undecided.
SD-SEN (OPEN): A new SurveyUSA poll found a tightening race for Senate in South Dakota, with former Gov. Mike Rounds (R) taking 39 percent support among likely voters while former Hill staffer Rick Weiland (D) drew 28 percent and former Sen. Larry Pressler (I) drew a quarter of the vote. In a head-to-head match-up between Rounds and Weiland, however, Rounds leads the Democrat by just 2 points.
KY-SEN (MCCONNELL): Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes released a new internal poll showing her essentially tied with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), taking 43 percent support among likely voters to McConnell’s 42 percent. That’s an outlier, however, in a series of polls that have shown McConnell breaking away from Grimes. Another such poll, conducted for GOP group American Crossroads, gives McConnell a 5-point lead on Grimes.
MI-SEN (OPEN): Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) has a double-digit lead over former Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land (R) in a new automated poll from Public Policy Polling.
VA-SEN (WARNER): Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) has a 22-point lead over former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie in a new poll.
CA-21 (VALADAO): Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) has a 19-point lead over Democrat Amanda Renteria in a new SurveyUSA poll.
IA-2 (OPEN) / IA-3 (OPEN): Democrats lead in two open Iowa House seats, according to a new poll from Loras College.
IL-10 (SCHNEIDER): Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) leads former Rep. Bob Dold (R-Ill.) 47 percent to 42 percent in an automated poll conducted for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
2016 WATCH
CRUZ: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is moving his chief of staff, Chip Roy, over to his political operation, a signal he could be preparing for a 2016 presidential bid.
CHRISTIE: New Jersey faced its eighth credit rating downgrade by Standard & Poor’s under Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) tenure, the most seen by any single New Jersey governor. Democrats ridiculed the governor over it, but he’ll likely cheer up at his sold-out birthday party fundraiser with Mitt Romney on Wednesday night.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long.”
—Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), explaining the lack of appetite among his colleagues for a vote authorizing the use of military force against ISIS