Republicans Launch Their Campaign to Blame Obama for Boston By Attacking the FBI

Last updated on April 24th, 2013 at 01:13 pm

Republicans took to the Sunday morning shows to attack the FBI, and to lay the groundwork for blaming President Obama for the Boston bombings

Here is the video of Sen. Graham on CNN’s State of the Union:

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Sen. Graham said, “The ball was dropped in one of two ways; the FBI missed a lot of things, is one potential answer, or our laws do not allow the FBI to follow up in a sound, solid way. There was a lot to be learned from this guy. He was on websites talking about killing Americans. He went overseas, as Chuck had indicated. He was clearly talking about radical ideas. He was visiting radical areas. And the fact that we could not track him has to be fixed. It’s people like this that you don’t want to let out of your sight. I don’t know if our laws are insufficient or the FBI failed, but we’re at war with radical Islamists and we need to up our game.”

Meanwhile on Fox News Sunday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said, “This is at least the fifth case I’m aware of where the FBI has failed to stop someone…This is the latest in a series of cases like this … where the FBI is given information about someone as being a potential terrorist. They look at them, and then they don’t take action, and then they [those individuals] go out and commit murders.”

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where Graham and King are going with this. Soon they will call for hearings on how the FBI handled the intelligence that they had before the events in Boston. Their purpose is twofold. They are looking for something to use to revive the Bush era war on terror policies, and they are searching for some way to blame President Obama for the attacks.

There is a difference between saying that the FBI needs to review how they handled any information they may have had before the attacks, and using politically loaded language like the FBI dropped the ball. King and Graham are trying to set up a narrative that will tie any “failures” that they find to President Obama. That is where this is heading.

Obama’s successes in combating terrorism have highlighted how badly Republicans bungled homeland security policy after 9/11. The GOP is desperate to get the perception that they are the party of national security back, so they have to find some way to paint President Obama as a failure on the issue. Obviously, Graham and King think they can accomplish this by blaming the FBI.

King, Graham, and other Republicans are trying to revive the politics of fear. This is why they are going to use an investigation of the FBI as their method of attack against President Obama. It is all about laying the groundwork for 2016. If you thought the Republican behavior after Benghazi was bad, their desperate fishing expedition on Boston could be even worse.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association