Excellent post by Matt Yglesias on the fearmongering of the right, especially in the wake of the FISA business, and the apparent Republican belief that a terrorist attack would help the GOP politically:

In essence, the Republicans are placing a heavy political bet on the idea of a terrorist attack happening some time while their “danger” clock is running. If Americans die, they’ll be in a position to clean up. Conversely, if we still have some semblance of legal protections against government surveillance months from now and that clock’s still ticking even though al-Qaeda hasn’t slaughtered any innocents here in the U.S., they’re going to look mighty silly.

That’s the dynamics of this specific fight but, of course, it’s also a microcosm for 21st century politics as a whole. And it’s part of what makes the Republican Party, as currently conceived, so incredibly dangerous. …

<snip>

Their political meal ticket is a population terrified of terrorism, and nothing whips that terror up quite like actual terrorism in London, Madrid, wherever. The result is a political party that simply can’t adopt policies designed to ratchet-down the level of danger and anxiety.

But again, let’s take it beyond this: If terrorism is good for the Republican Party in a political sense, tell me how it is that Republicans aren’t at least subconsciously hoping to be proven right, hoping for an actual terrorist attack in this country that would “prove” that we need to gut the Constitution in order to attain this ephemeral “safey?”

And if indeed such a latent desire exists - tell me again how it’s the Democrats who hate America?

Update: Kevin Drum chimes in:

One of the ironies of this is that conservatives have spent years accusing Democrats of, for example, not really wanting to do anything about racism because they get too much mileage out of making fiery speeches about it to the Urban League every four years. Whether there was ever anything to that or not, there’s not much question that this is exactly the GOP’s attitude toward terror. Their eagerness for another attack as a way of proving Democratic fecklessness is so palpable you can almost taste it.