Was Kevin Drum Too Timid to Call Karl Rove on His Latest BS?

Kevin points to the latest GOP attack on my party’s interest in national security – delivered by none other than Karl Rove:

“The United States faces a ruthless enemy, and we need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in,” Mr. Rove said. “President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats.” “Let me be as clear as I can be: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why,” Mr. Rove said, referring to the program in which the National Security Agency eavesdropped on conversations without getting a warrant from a judge. “Some important Democrats clearly disagree.”

Last refuge of a scoundrel? Try a serial liar who is more interested in attacking patriotic Democrats than making Americans safe from terrorism. Kevin ties this outrageous lie from Karl Rove to the corruption issue writing:

Now don’t get me wrong here. Corruption is a good issue for Dems if they can bring themselves to stop being so damn timid about it, and it’s also possible that Republicans will eventually discover that they’ve gone to the terrorism well once too often. Maybe. But I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it. Banging away on both corruption and the broader topic of Republican fealty to corporate special interests may help Democrats at the polls this year, but I don’t think national security is going away either. Unfortunately, I’m not getting a sense that Dems are spending much time thinking about that.

Maybe our Democratic leaders are too timid but I’m stunned at the timidity of what Kevin writes here. We Democrats are spending too little time thinking about national security? Is he kidding? We are thinking about national security – but whatever we say is either ignored by the Administration or twisted by their minions to accuse us of being soft on terrorism.

Don’t get me wrong – Kevin Drum is one of my favorite political bloggers, but this post was not up to his usual standards.

Update: Mark Kleiman provides the extra paragraph that I was hoping to see in Kevin’s post:

It seems to me that the Democrats’ play is obvious: point out that the Republicans have been stealing from the defense budget, using the Iraq adventure as a partisan piggy-bank and employment service, and otherwise sacrificing national security for corrupt partisan advantage. Repeat after me: “The price of Duke Cunningham’s Rolls-Royce would have bought a lot of body armor for the troops.”

So if Karl Rove wants to talk about national security, great. Let’s just point out how utterly incompetent this Administration has been at it. Yes, we Democrats need to put forth our own agenda, but my point is many Democrats have been – only to have the rightwing either deny our suggestions or simply twist our words for partisan advantage.