So I drank the coffee and drove back to Sioux City, just in time to hear Thompson make a joke about those derned New Yorkers in for a tightly-wound convention center crowd of middle-class white Iowans. All the Republican candidates pick on New York in red-state stumps, even Giuliani. It’s the easiest hit there is. John McCain, in South Carolina, started off one section of his speech by saying, “I’m sure most of you don’t read the New York Times…” and then smiling and waiting for the hisses. It’s cookie-cutter campaigning; the jokes come with your conservative campaign kit. Thompson’s riff was about having to work with all them Yankees on Law and Order.
http://www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/index.php/2007/10/09/year-of-the-rat-a-campaign-2008-diary-by-matt-taibbiSo they use the worst failure of national security ever as a rallying cry, a badge of honor (for them), and the basis of a campaign ("With us or against us" established that a vote against Bush meant you were voting against your own country) HELL they even held their convention there and literally danced on the graves of the victims to celebrate their glorious coming victory....and now this.
How utterly telling.