Thom Tillis
Here's a good sign a candidate has lost faith in his message: when he starts talking about every new headline. Witness North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis, who in recent days has tried out
Ebola and the Secret Service as ... attacks on Sen. Kay Hagan.
In both instances, the criticism made essentially the same point: The president can't keep America safe.
"How on earth can you protect the nation if you can't protect the White House?" he asked, according to an account of his speech Wednesday.
That might be a compelling argument against electing the Secret Service, but the president would seem to be more sinned against than sinning in this case, and what Hagan has to do with it is a total mystery.
In a statement Thursday about Ebola, he said "it makes absolutely no sense to risk more cases" by allowing travel to the West African countries. "It's time for Washington to take action to protect the American people," he asserted.
Too bad he didn't just ask "How on earth can you protect the nation if you can't personally defeat a virus?" That at least would have been obviously humorous. In any case, it's not as simple as banning flights from West Africa—the Texas Ebola patient
flew first from Liberia to Brussels, and then to the United States. But again, what is Hagan supposed to do about Ebola? Especially given that it's been Republicans cutting the budget at the Centers for Disease Control.
What Ebola and the Secret Service have in common is that while Tillis is clearly trying to tie Hagan to anything that's bad and in the headlines, the link between her and Ebola or her and the Secret Service is unclear at best. If you're a North Carolina voter who's inclined to blame Hagan for either of these things, or to claim you're putting them on your list of reasons not to vote for her, chances are you already weren't voting for her. But again, this is what candidates do when voters don't like them and their core message isn't working as well as they'd hoped: They flail.
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