Administration officials are fighting back against a Republican attack that's taken on new strength in recent weeks.

Since US President Barack Obama moved into the White House, terrorism has barely been a blip on voters' radar screens; they were focused on the recession and skyrocketing unemployment.

But all that changed on Christmas Day, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up an airplane flying to Detroit, Michigan.

The failure of US authorities to stop Abdulmutallab and the subsequent decision to treat him as a criminal suspect gave Republicans fodder for their attacks.

Speaking to Tea Party activists over the weekend, former vice presidential candidate and former Republican Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin accused the president of treating terrorism as an abstract issue.

"That's not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this. They know we're at war. And to win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law, standing at the lectern," Palin said.

Until recently, the administration paid little public attention to these criticisms. But in the last 10 days, the White House press secretary went on the offensive and issued a point-by-point rebuttal of the GOP attacks.

The administration also organized a press briefing to make it clear that Abdulmutallab is cooperating with FBI investigators. And counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan went on Meet The Press to defend the White House approach.

"Quite frankly, I'm tiring of politicians using national security issues such as terrorism as a political football," Brennan said.

Obama addressed the criticisms personally in an interview

"We're not handling any of these cases any different than the Bush Administration handled them all through 9/11," Obama said in a Feb. 7 interview on CBS.

The president added that under the Bush Administration, another would-be airline bomber, Richard Reid, was read his Miranda rights, just like Abdulmutallab. Reid was also tried in civilian court, and sentenced to life in prison. In fact, every terror suspect caught inside the United States was at least initially held in criminal - rather than military - custody. 

Political observers are beginning to wonder how well this Republican attack has worked. In a newly released Washington Post/ABC News poll, Obama's approval rating on handling the threat of terrorism got a 56 percent approval rating, up from 53 percent on November 15, before the attempted attack on the Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

That's a three-point increase in approval after a month's worth of sustained Republican attacks on Obama charging would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in federal court and reading him his Miranda rights.

The Post's numbers for comparative handling of terrorism show that Obama has the confidence of 47 percent of the public on the issue, while the Republican Party — long viewed as the party that enjoyed greater public trust on national security — only claims 42 percent. 

Liberal observers say this proves that treating terrorist suspects humanely in criminal courts can be leveraged to reap valuable intelligence, refuting a central aspect of the conservative security doctrine. And politically, they say it has proven that the public is resistant to empty accusations from the party that mired the country in unnecessary wars at the expense of necessary ones.