Are Republicans up the creek?

John Podhoretz:

No sensible Republican politician facing the voters in eight months is going to give a Democratic rival an easy way to get to his right on a national-security issue. The objections to the ports deal may be bogus as a matter of policy, but they're potent as a matter of politics.

Maybe if the Republicans in Congress weren't so feckless, they'd have forestalled this themselves.

Daniel Henninger accurately lambastes the Congressional reaction:

What we have here is the dawn of the new Yosemite Sam school of national politics. Put any news event in front of our politicians now--Hurricane Katrina, Terri Schiavo, Dick Cheney's quail or this week the ports--and like Bugs Bunny's hair-triggered nemesis they'll start spraying the landscape with wild remarks and opinions decoupled from what is knowable about these events. Wait to learn the facts--as almost alone, Sen. John McCain, suggested? Why bother? . . .

It is being said that the Dubai decision has merely given Democrats a chance to get to the president's right on a terror issue (a week after they dove over the ship of state's port side on wiretapping terrorists). Or that election-needy Republicans are distancing themselves from a president with a 40% approval rating. Possibly so, but I thought the war on terror was about something real, not just this fall's dog-catcher elections.

Read the whole thing.

This xenophobia is misdirected, but the damage is already done.