By almost any standard, the testing of a nuclear bomb by a rogue regime is a pretty significant event. It is also, one would hope, worthy of a great deal of attention and a far more serious debate than the one we've been having for the last ten days over a few pervy IMs from a gay Congressman.

Obviously, with only 30 days or so left to the election, this represents a pretty big, and perhaps final opportunity for Republicans to put the focus back on national security - though with a slightly different twist. In addition to talking about Democratic weakness in fighting terrorism (Patriot Act, NSA terrorist surveillance program, detainee interrogation program, etc), Republicans will almost certainly start talking loud and long about missile defense.

Specifically, since part of the GOP playbook this year has been trying to scare voters with the idea of Speaker Pelosi, expect Republicans to make her record on missile defense an issue. It won't be hard. A quick Google search turns up this 2003 speech to the Global Security Institute where she accepted the Alan Cranston Peace Award by telling the crowd:

"The United States does not need a multi-billion-dollar national missile defense against the possibility of a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile."

Or they might refer to her floor statement of March 18, 1999 when she urged her colleagues to vote against a bill (HR4) to establish a national missile defense system, saying flatly, "we do not need a missile defense." Pelosi joined 101 other Democrats - exactly half the party's caucus in the House - in voting against the measure.

Republicans might also point out, for the record, that the Senate version of the bill passed the day before by a vote of 97-3. All three who voted against were Democrats: one now deceased (Paul Wellstone), one who will chair the Judiciary Committee in a Democratically-controlled Senate (Pat Leahy), and one who will be the right hand man to Majority Leader Reid (Dick Durbin).

For their part, Democrats will claim that North Korea's nuclear test represents a failure of the Bush administration's foreign policy over the last six years. Republicans will undoubtedly respond by pointing out that Bill Clinton's policy toward North Korea in the final six years of his administration (aka the 1994 Agreed Framework) was an abject failure. We've had this discussion before already, but Republicans will be more than happy to sling mud back and forth and refight the issue of whose to blame over North Korea because it keeps the focus off Mark Foley and off Iraq

It may not be exactly the fight the GOP wanted to have for the final four weeks of the midterm election, but it will certainly do. Beggars, after all, can't be choosers.