Below The Beltway

Can the Republican Party can political advantage from the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hamdan case ? Well, they’re certainly going to try.

Republicans yesterday looked to wrest a political victory from a legal defeat in the Supreme Court, serving notice to Democrats that they must back President Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay or risk being branded as weak on terrorism.

In striking down the military commissions Bush sought for trials of suspected members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the high court Thursday invited Congress to establish new rules and put the issue prominently before the public four months before the midterm elections. As the White House and lawmakers weighed next steps, House GOP leaders signaled they are ready to use this week’s turn of events as a political weapon.

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s comment Thursday that the court decision “affirms the American ideal that all are entitled to the basic guarantees of our justice system.” That statement, Boehner said, amounted to Pelosi’s advocating “special privileges for terrorists.”

Similar views ricocheted around conservative talk radio — Rush Limbaugh called Pelosi’s comments “deranged” on his show Thursday — and Republican strategists said they believed that the decision presented Bush a chance to put Democrats on the spot while uniting a Republican coalition that lately has been splintered on immigration, spending and other issues.

There is precedent for this. Think back to December when Bush’s poll numbers were at historic lows. Then, the NSA international telephone call surveillance program was leaked to the media, and the Bush Administration reacted by defending the program and sending Bush on a speaking tour around the country. For the most part, it worked. The President’s approval ratings increased, although they have since leveled off and even declined somewhat, and the NSA story went from controversy to the back pages of the newspaper. The same thing could happen in the wake of the Hamdan ruling, and the Democrats know it:

Mindful of this thinking, Democrats were measured in their comments about how to respond to the ruling, which held that Bush’s policy was not authorized by law and violated the Geneva Conventions.

Brendan Daly, Pelosi’s spokesman, said Democrats “want to work with” the administration in fashioning new rules for terrorism suspects, and he dismissed Boehner’s comments as a sign of desperation. “[Bush] is not a king — he has to follow the law,” Daly said. “That’s all we’re saying.”

In other words, they would prefer to come to a resolution on the issue of Guantanamo and the military tribunals before the 2006 elections, so the Republicans can’t use it as an issue.

[S]ome GOP allies said they suspect that the decision will help energize a Republican base that has been angry at some Bush policies. Tom Liddy, a conservative talk show host in Phoenix, said that the decision has been a big topic on his show and that it could be another terrorism issue that works to the GOP’s advantage.

Liddy noted that House Republicans pushed through a resolution Thursday, over Democratic objections, criticizing the news media for publishing classified information about a secret anti-terrorism program that monitors bank transactions.

“It will be worse for the Democrats to be seen as favoring the terrorists than favoring the New York Times,” Liddy said.

And thus you have the GOP talking points for the 2006 elections.

Previous Posts:

Military Tribunals Unconstitutional
Hamdan And The War On Terror
Hamdan And Executive Power