The Republican strategy for trying to hold the Congress seems transparent enough: repeat, as often as possible, the words "Democrats cut and run" as often as possible.

Versions of this strategy have worked before. It could work again. Rather than lay back and allow ourselves to get hammered on national security yet again, I propose that we get on the offensive by grabbing the national security issue away from the Republicans. It won't happen overnight but we can begin the job in the runup to November.

My candidate for the mantra to repeat over and over again to set this issue up for us is to refer to the Republicans as *naive*, or better yet "dangerously naive", on national security policy.

Perhaps we might throw in the "i" word as well, as in the "naive and incompetent" Republican record on national security.

The "n" word is powerful. Republicans have often used it against Democrats when referring to national security policy in the past. It is a devastating charge to make, evoking a strong emotional reaction from the listener that doesn't even require background knowledge or argumentation about particular situations.

Anyone who visits this site could, off the top of their head, rattle off 3 or 4 open and shut cases of catastrophic Republican naivete in the management of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, for starters.

At or near the top of my list of followup talking points on this theme:

*failure to secure the ammo dumps upon entering Iraq.

*taking at face value information alleging Iraqi WMD activity from Chalabi, an exile and crook with zero support within Iraq and known political ambitions.

*failure to have US troops accompany anti-Taliban Afghanis into the Tora Bora mountains when they had bin Laden surrounded.

*believing the US would be welcomed with roses by the Iraqi people, as liberators rather than occupiers.

Perhaps others here have even better candidates for this talking points list, that are even easier to communicate and/or even more solid.

Do the voters want to entrust with a free hand in managing the exit strategy in Iraq the people who have demonstrated over and over again their naivete and incompetence on national security?

I'm inclined to think that is the better way to make the Iraq war issue work for us, or at least have it not work against us, than to argue it was a fatally flawed idea to begin with.

The "n" word on national security.

Think about it. It will have the added benefit of driving them to over-the-top fits of rage. They are at their most devastatingly self-destructive when they become unhinged, as they often do whenever the topic is Bill or Hillary Clinton.