In the wake of the botched attempt to blow up an airliner on Christmas day, Republicans are seeing dollar-signs. But the returns may be fleeting.
In an interview with Huffington Post, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says that going into the 2010 mid-term elections, Republicans will have plenty of questionable national security votes to answer for.
For starters, House Republicans opposed a Homeland Security funding bill that included funding for airport security. But it goes beyond the House, too. “I think we are going to be very interested in the rationale for those votes,” Van Hollen said. “I mean in the Senate you have the situation where Republicans were delaying a vote on the defense appropriations bill for the purpose of slowing down health care reform and I think the American people don’t want our national security to be held hostage to Republican procedural gamesmanship on health care.”
In other words, Democrats hope cheap shots like those taken by Republicans this week will backfire. We’ll know soon enough.
