I very much don’t understand what in the world is wrong with the National Republican Party:

In any case, Marc Lynch makes the right criticism of the Republican ad. He thinks that al-Qaeda’s media arm, al-Sahab, must be pretty jazzed that the GOP is helping the cause:

This is not just a video which suggests that Republicans will be better at fighting terror. It actually very closely resembles real al-Qaeda videos….This video would not look out of place on a jihadi forum, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it actually gets posted on them and admired (although the production values are a bit low for an actual al-Sahab product).

Anyone involved in analyzing or combating al-Qaeda’s media strategies has to be astounded that the Republican National Committee has financed, produced, distributed on the internet, and aired on US television what is for all intents and purposes an al-Qaeda recruitment video. The video, if it works as intended, will frighten the American people and influence American politics… just like al-Qaeda’s own videos. Bin Laden couldn’t be prouder, or more grateful, especially since it didn’t cost him a thing.

Read the whole thing for more on this theme. Marc notes that the Arab media has caught on to this “bizarre turn of events” even if the American media hasn’t.

I can say that I’m personally tired of being afraid. I was tired in about 2002, and I wanted to vote for people who would try to actually deal with terrorism instead of using it as a cudgel to beat down dissent.

My sense is that I’m not alone, and this trick of using fear to scare us into the R column isn’t going to work anymore. It would help if more of our political commentariat would actually try to inform us rather than repeating the same tired conventional wisdom all the time. It would be the easiest way to raise the quality of debate.

To put it succinctly, the media needs to report both what politicians do as well as what they say. It’s one thing to claim to be strong on terror, but another to advocate a policy and then unwaveringly defend it when it’s clearly failed. Why so many people can be wrong but still taken seriously is beyond me.