New GOP ad threatens voters with destruction...

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 12:44 PM on October 20, 2006.

A new Republican ad is essentially repeating Dick Cheney's pre-2004 tactic: vote Democrat and your family will die!!! Twice!

ABC News writes of the latest, to be unrolled this weekend:

The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. "These are the stakes," the ad concludes. "Vote November 7."

Yes, do. ABC notes that this commercial is a part of Republican efforts to make the war on terror front and center. They're only partly right. The actual array of policies designed to keep Americans safe, known as the war on terror, is an issue that now favors Democrats. A recent poll showed that, by a margin of 46%-38%, Americans trust Democrats to keep them safe.

Making terrorism central to the GOP strategy is not about making the actual security of Americans central, it's about making the terrorizing of Americans central.

Easy mistake. Anybody coulda made it.

Just look at this survey on worldwide attitudes on terrorism. 59% of the world opposes some form of torture (CORRECTION: 58% of Americans DON'T -- originally read that 58% of Americans do...).

But here's the BBC's observation: "countries that face political violence are more likely to accept the idea that some degree of torture is permissible because of the extreme threat posed by terrorists."

Tagged as: gop, ads, eletion06

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.