In a fundraising email to supporters yesterday, NRSC chairman John Ensign suggested that one of the top legislative priorities of “Big Labor, MoveOn.org and extremist environmental groups” is “weakening our national defense”:

Dear Republican Supporter,

Big Labor, MoveOn.org and extremist environmental groups have promised to spend millions to elect angry liberals like Al Franken to the U.S. Senate in November.

What’s more outrageous is that these groups expect the Democrats to payback their efforts by implementing their top legislative priorities like eliminating the secret ballot and weakening our national defense.

I’ve added this to my timeline of Republican attacks on dissent since 9/11.

PS What does Ensign mean when he says another top liberal priority is “eliminating the secret ballot”?

Update 5/8 8:49 PM: Commenters and correspondents report that Ensign is referring to the Employee Free Choice Act, which “would for the first time in 60 years allow workers to organize without putting the issue to a secret-ballot vote” — a process that labor unions believe benefits employers. The problem is that Ensign never makes clear that he’s talking about union votes. His jargon is so obscure that readers might end up thinking that Democrats want to weaken the secret ballot in federal elections.

[Disclosure: I worked for the Ed Bernstein for Senate campaign in Nevada in 2000 against John Ensign.]