Democrats suffered not because they sought to end the war in Vietnam, but because Vietnam was a Democratically initiated war based on lies

Phew. 'Bout time people started saying this ... I can't believe the CW believes what it/they believe. Right now, the GOP numbers on "national security" are following pretty much the same trajectory as the Democrats in the late-60s, all without a bunch of Freepers marching in the streets against the war.

Those Dems who want to cut off funds to prevent the escalation want to avoid cutting off funds from troops already in theater.

But for that to happen, the bill cutting off funds must be passed before the extra troops arrive in Iraq.

The only possibly effective way of cutting off funds is by way of a rider to a must-pass bill - the supplemental defense apps bill would be the first to come to floor votes.

(So that Bush can't veto the funds cutoff without consequences - as he could always do with a stand-alone bill.)

But, by the time the supplemental apps bill arrives on the floors, the escalation troops will already be in Iraq!

That's abstracting from the problem that there may well not be a simple majority in either house for a cutoff of funds for troops not in theater.

Or that there may be a majority in the House, but not the Senate.

Amongst other things.

It shows that, in 1967, each party was trusted more than the other on national security (via proxies, as detailed in the note to the chart) by around 30% of voters.

That implies that, in 1967, 40% of Americans didn't give an opinion, or said they didn't know, or said they trusted both parties equally.

Can that be right? Or is it an artifact?

It's not just lazy and untrue, it's also a grave insult.  How dare they?  How dare they imply that people who are against this war are anything but concerned for our troops?  We're the ones trying to extricate them from this GOP-instigated clusterf*** that serves no national purpose and actually makes America weaker in the world, not stronger.

Wiesman and Balz are just another reason that the Washington Post is going straight down the tubes.

     Dan Balz's presence is an assurance that Broderism will survive long after David Broder himself. Politicians may come and gay, but the Permanent Government of the Beltway Kool Kidz will go on forever.

     "come and go". Sorry.

I don't buy it. It is pretty rare when an executive's mendacity permanently affects the public's view of the entire party on a specific issue.

People distrusted Democrats on national security during the Carter Administration, because they thought Carter was just as Mendacious as LBJ on national security? We do see a big spike in distrust toward the Democrats in the late 70s, but I don't think that's why.

What about Nixon's lying over Watergate? That was a much more infamous incident of mendacity, and yet we see very little movement to the Democrats on national security.

My personal take is that Democrats lost short term credibility due to management of the Vietnam War, and that short-term loss turned into a more permanent loss when the party seemed to be captured by factions that were deemed to be too shy in using force to accomplish sufficiently important, or easily obtainable, policy goals. The American public recovered from Vietnam syndrome much faster than the Democratic Party did.

If so, I wouldn't necessarily expect Bush to bring about any permanent change in the GOP's national security reputation. If the GOP takes a permanent hit, I think it will be because of the party's reaction to the failures in Iraq - denial, blame-shifting, continued hubris. If they they think the GOP is going to get us into another Iraq, or hasn't learned from its mistakes, the GOP will take a hit.

But this doesn't mean a free ride for the Dems. What scared me about the 2004 election is that the public had seen 4 years of Bush, and 18 months of incompetence in Iraq, and still trusted Bush more than Kerry on national security.

While specific reasons for not trusting the GOP on national security will help the Dems, the Dems need to give the public a reason for trusting them. I don't see that happening until a Democratic President successfully presides over a major/medium-sized military action in defense of American interests. Something akin to the 2001 intervention in Afghanistan, only more successfully concluded.

This piece has another piece of "conventional wisdom" that the media constantly pushes.

The bold plans reflect the Democrats' belief that the public has abandoned Bush on the war and that the American people will have little patience for an escalation of the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

This is perpetuating the Right-Wing narrative that Republicans have conviction and do what they think is right, while Democrats just blow with the breeze of public opinion.  This has been a longly held narrative that the media so blindly accepts that it slips into their writing probably without even them realizing it.