Kevin Drum of Mother Jones is an old hand on the left and has seen enough politics that he realizes what a big loser of an issue the Syrian “refugee” inflow is for the Democrats and the left. He cautions his fellow progs:

Over the past 24 hours, almost half of the nation's governors — all but one of them Republicans — have said they plan to refuse to allow Syrian immigrants into their states in the wake of the Paris attacks carried out by the Islamic State....That stance has been greeted with widespread ridicule and disgust by Democrats who insist that keeping people out of the U.S. is anathema to the founding principles of the country.

....Think what you will, but one thing is clear: The political upside for Republican politicians pushing an immigration ban on Syrians and/or Muslims as a broader response to the threat posed by the Islamic State sure looks like a political winner.

I pointed out this out a couple of days ago, in fact. And Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post agreed:

The political upside for Republican politicians pushing an immigration ban on Syrians and/or Muslims as a broader response to the threat posed by the Islamic State sure looks like a political winner.

The Pew Research Center did an in-depth poll looking into Americans' view on Islamic extremism in the the fall of 2014 — and its findings suggest that politicians like Cruz have virtually nothing to lose in this fight over how best to respond to ISIS's latest act of violence.

Fellow progs are not reacting well to this does of reality (but then, when has reality ever been a major factor in prog thinking?) Ryan Cooper, writing in The Week, goes for outright denial of the threat of Islamic terrorism.

Islamist terrorism is a fairly minor threat. Yes, the Paris attacks (like 9/11, Madrid, Mumbai, and countless atrocities in Iraq and Syria) were a terrible tragedy. But we need to be realistic about how strong ISIS really is. It's true that decently organized young men with simple explosives and cheap automatic weapons can easily massacre hundreds of civilians and terrorize millions. But that is not even close to a "an organized attempt to destroy Western civilization," as Jeb Bush ludicrously claimed. Compared to Nazi Germany, or the Soviets with their hundreds of long-range nukes, ISIS is pathetically weak.

I suppose this falls under the “acceptable damage” school of thought, though it ignores dirty bombs and the delivery system of suicide jihadis. Radioactive contamination of the hearts of half a dozen or a dozen American cities, for instance.

Others, like somebody who calls himself BooMan, double down on the insults while wrapping themselves in virtue:

if we're compelled to take the losing political argument because it's the right thing to do, then we should at least point out that our opponents are bedwetters who become incontinent every time they think of a Muslim terrorist- even when that Muslim terrorist is shackled in Guantanamo and being fed orange-glazed chicken, rice pilaf and two kinds of fruit.

Oddly enough, BooMan joins Rush Limbaugh in seeing Gitmo as a pretty spiffy prison, not a hellhole of torture, as is leftist dogma.

Still others, like Charles P. Pierce of Esquire attempt to distinguish good (i.e., liberal or blue state) concern from bad (i.e., conservative) concern over the dangers.

We can dismiss Governors Greg Abbott of Texas, and Robert Bentley of Alabama, and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and Phil Bryant of Mississippi, all of whom went quickly for the chest-pounding end of the xenophobic scale. (snip)

Charlie Baker is not a bigot. Neither is Maggie Hassan. Their concerns are not posturing. They are not for show.

Still others stress how rigorous the screening will be. Yeah, trust the federal government, because we can see how well the TSA does catching bombs and weapons every time a test is run.  The voting public will react to “Trust us: we’re the feds” in an entirely appropriate fashion, I believe.

I say, let the circular firing squad form up on the left. Keep emphasizing, like Obama, that we need to feel good about ourselves as enlightened people, and let in potential jihadis. The Tsarnaev brothers were once youngsters who passed screening. How did that work out?