Ground Game

It took but a few moments after news broke yesterday of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for the cable news networks to begin debating which presidential candidate would benefit most from the news.

Almost as quickly, several liberal bloggers began criticizing the discussion. For instance, Talking Points Memo’s Greg Sargent singles out a discussion by MSNBC Joe Scarborough over the potential political fallout.

But over at MyDD, Todd Beeton defends looking at the politics of murder:

I'm sorry but Bhutto's assassination was a political event whether people like it or not; it's much larger than the tragic death of Bhutto and the throngs of supporters who were killed as well, this is earth-shaking, both abroad and at home. There is a parliamentary election in Pakistan on January 8th, which Bhutto's death clearly throws into chaos; is it distasteful to speak of that election as well? And what arbitrary date does it suddenly become OK to discuss the political ramifications of this event? As much as people like to belittle talk of who is going to win the primaries over the next few weeks as trivial "horserace" coverage, there are few issues more crucial to the future of our world than who the next president of the United States is. The extent to which this event informs that decision, I see it as absolutely relevant to the discussion.

In the conservative blogosphere, Captains Quarters' Ed Morrissey went after Bill Richardson for calling on Musharraf to resign in light of the assassination.

Over at Time’s Swampland blog, Jay Carney brings a different perspective to the conventional wisdom reaction that national security candidates like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani benefit from such news:

[T]he impact of international events on domestic elections can be hard to predict. Take McCain's resurgence among the Republicans. McCain brandished his hawkish stand on Iraq earlier this year. Together with immigration, it nearly killed his campaign. Now that Iraq has receded as an issue and turned into a positive of sorts, at least for him, McCain has risen from the ashes. But that may be mere coincidence. McCain is benefitting far less from his steadfast stance on Iraq or his national security experience than he is from the unprecedented fluidity of the GOP race, the general unhappiness of Republican voters with their choices and the surprise surge of Mike Huckabee as a potential Romney-killer in Iowa.