The First Terror Crisis of the New Republican Congress
Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, speaks during the 31st Annual Meeting of the Bretton Woods Committee at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, May 21, 2014.
Photographer: Pete Marovich/BloombergThe new Republican majority owes some of its size and clout to voters' worries about terrorism. North Carolina's Thom Tillis was struggling until he started attacking his opponent for missing a meeting that got into the threat of the Islamic State; he's now a Republican senator. "My boots were on the ground now held by ISIS," said Iraq veteran and new Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who scored the year's biggest Republican upset. When Democratic Senator Mark Udall told Colorado voters that ISIS did not present an "imminent threat" to America, he was pilloried–and, ultimately, defeated.
The killings of 12 people in Paris, by people apparently targeting cartoonists who made light fun of Islam, is the first terror crisis of the new Congress. Republicans are responding by emphasizing the anti-terror strategies they've been talking about for years.