Senator McConnell is flailing. His Fancy Farm speech sounded like it was from 1994, bashing "Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in Washington who are busily at work trying to raise taxes, add more regulation and more litigation." Unfortunately for Mitch, the public trusts Democrats more than Republicans on taxes, 43-41, and on the economy generally, 47-38. Hillary Clinton is still in the middle of a contested primary, and her husband won Kentucky twice.

Mitch's Iraq talking points are a bit more recent, but still plenty dated:

I guarantee you that it's because we've gone on offense in places like Afghanistan and Iraq that we haven't been hit again at home since Sept. 11."

# Bruce Schreiner. "McConnell hails expansion of eavesdropping powers." Associated Press Aug 13 2007.

And:

"We haven't been attacked since 9/11 and there's only one reason for that. We've gone on the offensive because we've gone after these terrorists in places like Kabul, Baghdad so we didn't have to fight them in places like Washington and New York," McConnell said.

# "Senator Mitch McConnell Visits Eastern Kentucky." WKYT Aug 7 2007.

The line sounded better when Dick Cheney said it in September '03: "Our military is confronting the terrorists, along with our allies, in Iraq and Afghanistan so that innocent civilians will not have to confront terrorist violence in Washington or London or anywhere else in the world."

This argument used to be called "flypaper." But that was before it became a laughingstock, discarded by even the most devout defenders of the Iraq war. Except, apparently, for our illustrious Senator.

Vice President Cheney had the misfortune to claim that the war in Iraq would distract terrorists from London; since then, there was a spectacular attack on their transit system, and a series of barely foiled attacks not two months ago.

In reality: rather than focusing terrorist attention on Iraq, our war there has distracted us from Al Qaeda in Pakistan, degraded our military readiness, damaged our relations with allies, provided invaluable training to would-be terrorists in urban & guerilla warfare, and served as a rallying point for jihadists across the globe.