The five ways US politics changed after Paris

By Glenn Thrush


Voters demand security, Republicans find a wedge issue, and even Sanders wants to destroy ISIL.


During a more carefree era — a week ago last Friday afternoon — the click-me clip sitting atop CNN.com featured Donald Trump doing his routine about Ben Carson’s knife-and-belt story. The big moment was Trump stepping away from the lectern to exhibit his buckle, and with it an expanse of Italian dress shirt approximately the size of casino-roof chopper pad.
Then, in a flash, the frivolity vanished – displaced by real reality TV, the ghastly news from Paris that at least 129 innocents had been murdered in the heart of the city by teams of terrorists.

Elections aren’t just about policy, candidates or the national mood – they are about events, by their nature unanticipated, that shift the paradigm of a race. The massacre in Paris, which portends a widening threat here and an expanding conflict in Syria and Iraq, has sobered up the campaign in a hurry (though not entirely) – with hard-to-predict implications.
Hare are five ways the attacks changed the 2016 political landscape:
1. Even Bernie Sanders wants to “destroy” ISIL.One of the most significant domestic political developments of the last seven days was among the least noticed: The most liberal candidate in the 2016 race, a Vermont Socialist who railed against the Iraq War from the jump, instantly accepted the new reality that the group known as ISIL and ISIS needed to be wiped out after the attacks during the Saturday night Democratic debate. Then, on Friday, he reiterated his call “to destroy the brutal and barbaric ISIS regime” with the caveat that military action should be “the last resort, not the first resort.” This he would accomplish in conjunction with a large international coalition that would include a new never-gonna-happen NATO-type organization that includes Russia, site of his first honeymoon.
In truth, Sanders is not the unequivocal dove most people assume he is: One of his House staffers resigned in 1999 when he backed Bill Clinton’s action in Kosovo and he consistently backed war funding bills for Afghanistan and Iraq. But it’s telling. The guy occupying furthest-left flank of the 2016 field has not categorically ruled out using ground forces if, and only if, the threat to the homeland is high enough. Democratic voters, who are overwhelmingly opposed to any boots-on-the-ground deployments, may not be as open to deeper entanglements but the anti-war party’s leadership increasingly is.
2. The GOP finds a wedge issue: You don’t have to live with a refugee.
The velocity of the American political synapse is a wonder to behold. Within hours of the attacks, the discussion in the GOP (and the right-most quarters of the Democratic party) quickly flipped from a muddy, depressing and terrifying discussion of military decisions to be made to the vastly more comfortable debate over what to do about the Syrian refugees Obama promises to resettle in the heartland.
Sure, bottom-dwellers in the polls like Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush were carping on and on about the new reality, and the need to confront ISIL immediately on the ground. (“This is the war of our time,” Bush told Morning Joe early in the week. “We cannot do this by leading from behind, this requires American leadership, it doesn’t require us to be the world’s police, but it does require us to lead.”)
But the smarter play – and one that dovetails with the party base position in immigration in general – was to assail the (very real) threat of terrorists infiltrating the U.S. Chris Christie, who couldn’t buy a headline for weeks, out-trumped Trump – declaring that he wouldn’t even allow a five-year-old orphan” into Jersey; Not to be outdone, Trump suggested a national registry tracking all Muslims and tweeted thusly: “Refugees from Syria are now pouring into our great country. Who knows who they are – some could be ISIS. Is our president insane?” Then Ben Carson called some of the refugees “rabid dogs.”
The difference this time, however, is that a lot of Democrats are on board with the GOP no-refugees policy, if not the rhetoric. And the issue of the Syrian refugee is becoming that rarest of 2016 rarities: A genuine wedge issue Republicans can use against Democrats. Forty-seven Democrats voted yesterday for a bill (sure to be vetoed by Obama) that suspends the program allowing Iraqi refugees into the country pending security upgrades.
3. Trump is in no man’s land.
Nobody body-surfs a headline better than Donald Trump – and his tough talk in the wake of the attacks seems to have delivered yet another spike in popularity, especially at the expense of a less than sure-footed Carson. But he’s less gung-ho than he projects. Foreign affairs have proven to be an area where he’s exhibited a kind of bombast-cloaked nuance: He was a proud Iraq War skeptic, and was one of the few Republicans to public invite Russia’s intervention in the Syrian theater – the better to keep U.S. troops from putting troops in harm’s way.
But his big plan for ISIL-killing – a limited use of ground troops coupled with bombing oil fields owned by the Islamic State — is more a placeholder than a bold, comprehensive policy — and it’s been dismissed by many military analysts. Moreover, it falls far short of the more decisive – if not necessarily popular — calls from ground-troop intervention by Bush and Lindsey Graham, two opponents he’s dismissed as wimpy.
This will likely be the issue voters use to decide whether he’s a serious candidate – so he better get serious, and fast.
4. Clinton is in no woman’s land.
In theory, the Paris attacks ratify Clinton’s hawkish, calibrated, moderately-interventionist worldview — and mark her (in the eyes of supporters) as the most battle-ready candidate in field. It’s an issue that should ultimately play to her advantage (Clinton and Trump score the highest marks on the issue, according to a poll earlier this week) but it’s also complicated.
Clinton’s 2003 support of the Iraq invasion cost was, arguably, the most important — and damaging – moment of her legislative career. It cost her dearly in 2008 — she was forced to hold hands with then-opponent Barack Obama in a bid to limit funding for the war when things went south, and she reluctantly apologized for the original war vote after the campaign. But as Secretary of State, Clinton was among those pressing Obama to adopt a more forceful approach in Libya and still views herself as the person you want on the Washington end of that 3 a.m. phone call.
Her speech to the Council of Foreign relations Thursday illustrated her command of the issues, but it also was an exercise in Trump-style fence straddling. “It’s time to begin a new phase to intensify and broaden our efforts, to smash the would-be caliphate and deny ISIS control of territory in Iraq and Syria,” she said.
But her plan – intensifying air strikes and pushing “local people and nations” into a ground war with ISIL is at best an iffy proposition. Previous attempts to stand up the Iraqi army and arm the non-Islamist anti-Assad rebels in Syria have proven a humbling, cash-wasting failure.
That sets up a double dilemma: Is she willing to buck her still-dovish base and call for a greater military response if the situation deteriorates? And is she willing to challenge Obama if she thinks he isn’t going far enough?
5. The issue isn’t going away.
A Slate headline on Tuesday said it all: “Number of Americans Who Say Terrorism Is Country’s Biggest Problem Doubles in Four Days.”