Obama Gets High Ratings on National Security

Poll: Obama Better Than Bush — On National Security And Terrorism

Striking findings buried in the new Democracy Corps poll:

When it comes to national security, do you think President Obama is doing better, worse, or about the same as President George W. Bush?

Total better: 39
Total worse: 31

And:

When it comes to combating terrorism and handling terrorism suspects, do you think President Obama is doing better, worse, or about the same as President George W. Bush?

Total better: 38
Total worse: 31

So Obama is rated better than Bush on national security and terrorism and the handling of terror suspects — despite the fact that the Cheneyites have been arguing for months that by undoing Bush policies, Obama has made us less safe.

The poll also finds that Obama retains a high 58% approval rating on national security and 55% on terrorism.

Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol and "Keep America Safe"? are losing the support of even far far Right conservatives, Cheneyites Lose Stimson, Rivkin, Casey in al-Qaeda Shark-Jump

David Rivkin and Lee Casey are an op-ed-writing team of former GOP legal officials who defend practically every terrorism-related policy pushed by the Bush administration. Here they are saying that warrantless surveillance “has always been on firm legal ground.” Here they are saying that the Justice Department and CIA torture memos somehow prove “the actual techniques used… did not cause severe pain or degradation.” Here they are saying that Congress can do practically nothing to stop a war aside from ceasing to appropriate money for it. Clearly they know something about implausible spin. And even they think the Cheneyites crossed a line by calling Justice Department lawyers who defended Guantanamo detainees the “al-Qaeda Seven.“

Ben Smith has a letter signed by a coalition of Republican legal mainstays, including Rivkin and Casey, denouncing Keep America Safe’s most recent ad, terming it “a shameful series of attacks” on people who upheld the “American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients [which] is at least as old as John Adams’s representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre.”