What If?

Hillary Clinton thinks another terrorist attack on American soil would help the GOP -- and I couldn't disagree more.

Absence of a terror attack since 9/11 has been the only good thing to happen to the Bush administration during its time in office and has been used as the justification for a number of controversial domestic security polices (i.e. wire-tapping). If an attack were to happen they would no longer have that card to play, the public would start to question the ultimate utility of measures that infringe on civil liberties, the competency issue would come up yet again, and it would likely mark the death nail in the coffin of the myth of Republican superiority in national security affairs.

This is the administration that basically throws a parade every time they arrest a group of brown-skinned men with Middle Eastern accents who are suspected of plotting an act of terror, has developed a GULAG of black sites around the world used for extraordinary rendition, has practice some extremely dubious legal tactic in the Moussaoui and Padilla cases, and is currently running a human right nightmare in Guantanamo all in the name of defending the homeland. All of that becomes suspect after another terror attack.

Obviously, no one wants to see another attack, but if one were to happen there's simply no way the country would rush back into the protective arms of the GOP like it did after 9/11. Republicans have simply lost too much of their "security capital" on Iraq and have acquired too much baggage on the terrorism issue for that to happen.