Throughout last year’s campaign for the White House, all the way through the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term, it was a common refrain: Republicans couldn’t find a line of attack that stuck to him.
That may change following the collapse of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government at the hands of the Taliban weeks before the 20th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. Republicans have no shortage of Biden criticisms that finally seem to be landing.
“Mr. President, wake up and lead. Your denial that Afghanistan will be back under Taliban rule on the upcoming 20th anniversary of 9/11 is bizarre,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, in a statement. “You’re still engaging in evasion, denial of reality, blame-shifting, false dichotomies, and delusional happy talk.”
ONCE A POINT OF AGREEMENT, BIDEN AND TRUMP TRADE BLAME ON AFGHANISTAN
“What in the world is Joe Biden doing?” asked Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican who chairs the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, as he floated invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.
Over two dozen Republican senators sent a letter to the Pentagon sounding the alarm on U.S. military equipment abandoned in Afghanistan during the messy pullout.
“It is unconscionable that high-tech military equipment paid for by U.S. taxpayers has fallen into the hands of the Taliban and their terrorist allies,” the senators wrote. “Securing U.S. assets should have been among the top priorities for the U.S. Department of Defense prior to announcing the withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
“So this is what it looks like when Biden plans for all contingencies?” Republican National Committee rapid response director Tommy Pigott asked in a statement highlighting some administration press briefings on Afghanistan. “Not having answers to basic questions after a botched withdrawal left Americans in danger?”
Biden was supposed to be boring — a welcome reprieve from constant controversy and rapidly shifting news cycles under former President Donald Trump. Viewership and readership of news outlets declined, along with interest in politics, as Biden replaced Trump earlier this year.
As Kabul fell, the news cycle is as chaotic as the conditions in that war-torn country, despite Biden’s best efforts to keep the White House in vacation mode.
Biden’s approval ratings are down, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll showing just 46% approving of his job performance. Even before Afghanistan unraveled, the public was split on his leadership. According to one survey, 34% thought he was a “very weak” leader, while only 19% considered him “very strong.”
A late May Rassmussen poll found 43% of likely voters thought Biden was weaker than most recent presidents. Only 32% believed he was stronger.
These perceptions could harden and work against Biden if he seeks a second term. They may also damage Democrats seeking to hold on to narrow congressional majorities in next year’s midterm elections, as history does not favor the president’s party.
Biden mostly succeeded last year by making the presidential election a referendum on Trump and his management of the pandemic. But now vaccinations have stalled, the delta variant is boosting COVID-19 caseloads, and Afghanistan has joined the border as an area where the nightly news shows Biden getting bad results. It won’t be easy to run away from this record next year or in 2024.
Trump has returned to the airwaves to take shots at the successor he once derided as “Sleepy Joe.” He told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal was “the greatest embarrassment … in the history of our country.”
“It’s a great thing that we are getting out,” said Trump, who called for a withdrawal by May of this year. “But nobody has ever handled a withdrawal worse than Joe Biden.”
Trump compared Biden’s handling of Afghanistan to the Iranian hostage crisis under Jimmy Carter.
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Carter was defined by that crisis and was defeated by a landslide margin in his reelection bid a year later. Biden has more time to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan and recover politically at home, assuming he decides to run again while in his 80s. Casualties to civilians who are currently being evacuated may yet be avoided.
But Republicans are finding their footing in going after Biden, who has stumbled into a crisis that he cannot use his relative likability to get out of. It is a perilous moment for Democrats.
