Abu Muqawama reads the poll data. Something like 30-odd percent of Democrats favor the Afghanistan war. Something like 70-odd percent of Republicans do. The Obama administration is a Democratic administration. He wonders:

 And I have a tough time believing, too, that Obama is going to face a tough primary challenge from an ati-war candidate in the 2012 elections or that he will lose the independent vote to a Republican in the general election because he is too hawkish on Afghanistan. So, why? Is this not like being scared of one’s own shadow? Or is this just more evidence of an administration that seems to fear a fight with its own party more than a fight with the Taliban?

I’d take a different approach to the question. Obama’s cratering has come somewhat from independents, but mostly from disillusioned Democrats who expected much more progressive change they could believe in than, say, bank bailouts and public optionless health care reform and (wrongly, since Obama campaigned on escalating the Afghanistan war) an escalation of the Afghanistan war. So when it comes to support for what remains an ambitious (I think that’s a good value-neutral term here) agenda, that’s an alarming sign.

Because this is the opposition. 

I just spoke with Florida Republican Party press secretary Katie Gordon, regarding state party chairman Jim Greer’s denunciation of President Obama’s upcoming national address to schoolchildren on Tuesday. Gordon stood by the party’s press release — and said that children should not be subjected to what she said is a clear attempt at political indoctrination by the Obama administration.

Matthew Yglesias observes: "Probably the biggest moral of the story is that the contemporary conservative movement is run by crazy people with no scruples, who’ll turn anything into a pretext to level wild accusations." Yesterday Michael Steele put out a press release saying the GOP supports Obama on Afghanistan. And the polling indicates that there’s a sizable base of support for that position. But this is a lot of cognitive dissonance to base support for a war on. One minute your hypothetical conservative is demanding to see Barry Soetoro’s birth certificate and the next she’s backing President Obama’s tough choices in Afghanistan?

Perhaps it would be nice to live in a world where politics ended at the water’s edge. Three days out of seven each week I’m dubious, because it seems too coterminous with the idea, untenable in a democracy, that foreign policy ought to be beyond the realm of debate, and that’s unhealthy. Four days out of the week I’d like to believe we could come together, at least, to have a more-civil-than-usual debate. But in any event, it should be clear that we don’t live in that world. If the Obama administration is going to dismiss progressive concerns about Afghanistan, it needs to be prepared to put its major foreign-policy initiative in the hands of the people who want most to destroy Obama’s presidency. It needs to be prepared to say: When the going gets tough, we can at least count on Sarah Palin not to demagogue the issue. Or, at the very least, it needs to be prepared to say: This initiative is so absolutely important to U.S. interests that we should be prepared to endure simultaneous political attacks from the left and the right; and recognize that this will eat into support for our domestic agenda. 

To be clear: I’m enough of a wanker to read that paragraph back and think it sounds harsh. I don’t want to assume the worst about the Republican Party or the conservative movement. The good folks at Shadow Government are building a principled conservative foreign policy that isn’t an opportunistic foreign policy and doesn’t just appear conservative to progressives like me. And conservatives can and do viciously attack Obama precisely because they feel that U.S. interests, at home and abroad, depend on it. I’m not saying these disagreements are purely dishonest ones. I’m saying they exist, and that basing a political coalition for a war around a denial of that recognition is no less delusional than pretending that support for something-no-one-ever-actually-called-The Good-War was ever anything more than surface deep. 

 Also: If you’re interested in more discussion of Afghanistan, I’ll be on the Rachel Maddow show tonight around 9:30, barring acts of God or Tom Ridge.

Update: Polling caveat! Not entirely sure how this impacts Afghanistan, but I feel compelled to note that Greg Sargent tears through some crosstabs of a new Ipsos/McClatchy poll and finds that Democratic support for Obama has ticked up since earlier in the summer.