NYT's Healy: 'Some Voters' See GOP as 'Stoking the Recent Violence and Threats Against Mosques'

By Clay Waters | December 4, 2015 | 7:28 PM EST

Patrick Healy reported on how the recent terrorist attacks are affecting presidential campaign rhetoric in Thursday's New York Times under the headline "Skittish Over Terrorism, Some Voters Seek a Gutsy Style of Leader." "Skittish" [excitable, easily scared] is a pretty condescending way to characterize the American public's legitimate fears of terrorism. But far worse is Healy's inference that Republican rhetoric on Syrian refugees had stoked threats against mosques. He also linked the rough treatment of a Black Lives Matter activist who disrupted a Trump rally to a shooting at a BLM protest in Minneapolis.

“Get off my plane,” growls the president of the United States to a terrorist hijacker in the 1997 movie “Air Force One,” before snapping the enemy’s neck and shoving him out the cargo door.

Triumphal music swells. The good guys have won. And no less than Harrison Ford has shown what a president can do if he is Han Solo and Indiana Jones rolled into one.

With the Islamic State suddenly rivaling the economy as their top concern in recent polls, many voters are looking for wartime strategies from the 2016 presidential candidates. But after seven years of a cerebral President Obama, there is no denying that some also want a leader who radiates gutsiness and a take-charge resolve. Not simply the “strong leader” that pollsters ask about, but someone who makes them feel safe on a visceral level.

Healy used the classic "Some say..." evasion to accuse the GOP of stirring up violent threats.

Yet the desire to feel in control, at a time of turmoil, is having ugly consequences in the eyes of some voters. Many Republican officials are trying to stop Syrian refugees from entering the United States, and some have used incendiary language about Muslims, which some voters see as stoking the recent violence and threats against mosques in Connecticut, Florida, Nebraska and Texas.

Mr. Trump’s talk of a national database to track Muslims drew widespread denunciations, and his combative language has spilled over at some of his rallies, like one in Alabama on Nov. 21 where several white men punched and kicked a black man who was chanting, “Black lives matter.” In Minneapolis a few nights later, five people were shot during a Black Lives Matter protest. Four people have been charged in connection with the shooting.

“I have more fear of Americans who want to take charge and take things into their own hands than I do of international terrorists coming into our country,” said Kim Van Es, the Democratic leader in Sioux County, Iowa. “These Americans are already here.”

Mr. Trump, in an interview, had no regrets about the Alabama crowd’s roughing up the black man, saying, “People were very angry at his disruptions, and their feelings matter, too.” He said he “understood” that his tough talk could stir passions, but he instead attributed the violence to Americans’ pent-up frustrations, which he said a president has to face, and not to some deep-seated racism or ill will.

Healy betrayed his slant by reducing Republican rhetoric to "catchphrases" and "buzzwords of the right."

She has proposed more aggressive actions in Syria -- like imposing a no-fly zone and ordering more airstrikes -- than Mr. Obama has taken. And while some voters see Mr. Obama as weak because he is unwilling to risk American troops and avoids blunt language like the Republican catchphrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” Mrs. Clinton is open to more Special Operations troops in Syria and has been using the phrase “radical jihadism” to try to counter the buzzwords of the right.