Increasingly, the midterm elections are trending toward the Republican candidates throughout the nation. While some states are behind the curve — North Carolina and Michigan — the others show mounting Republican leads.

Beyond disapproval of Obama and his policies, the impetus for this trend lies in the focus on national security, terrorism and foreign policy issues that has suddenly gripped the nation. A content analysis of the daily news shows that with each beheading, the focus on the disastrous events in the Middle East grows. With attack helicopters now flying missions against ISIS, we are, effectively, in our third Iraq war.

Every issue has an innate and largely immutable partisan skew. After decades of experience, voters have come to see each issue as "belonging" to one party or the other. Only through great effort and massive expenditure can the other party win an edge on an issue biased against it.

Education, environment, poverty, Social Security, elderly and health care are almost always Democratic issues. Taxation, budget deficits, defense, national security, social values and crime have an innate Republican bias. Usually the topic that gets the most national attention is a sure indicator of which party will win the election.

The increasing focus on national security issues as Obama's amateurish foreign policy unravels likely presages big Republican majorities.

It generally doesn't matter how the flow of argument goes, it is the topic itself that dictates the outcome.

Rarely, very rarely, a party can temporarily steal an issue from its rival. George W. Bush neutralized the education issue by focusing on it almost exclusively in his 2000 convention and proposing the No Child Left Behind Act. Soon, however, the issue was back in the Democratic camp. Similarly, Bill Clinton borrowed the crime issue in 1996 by legislation on extra police, a federal death penalty, more prisons space, and gun control.

Obama's terrible health care program has driven that issue into Republican hands since 2010. But the president's foreign policy is — to say the least — not sufficiently effective to compel support that would cut against the natural grain of the issue.

The domination of the news cycle by foreign and defense issues are likely to accelerate, not slacken, as the midterm elections approach. Obama is not in control of events. Russia and Ukraine come into the news whenever Putin wants them to. ISIS dominates coverage by its barbarity and military progress. The inability of American airstrikes to stop its military assure that the issue will continue at the forefront of the news.

The failure of Obama's foreign policy — in particular of his withdrawal from Iraq and his betting on the Arab Spring — is a uniquely personal one to the president. It was his advocacy that now looks. Neither the Russia reset button nor his overtures to Islam seem particularly prescient in the current crisis.

Nor are there other issues in Obama's quiver to take away focus from national security. He can't suddenly make abortion, birth control or climate change central national issues.

If the focus on national security ever dims, his deeply unpopular health care law, the torrent of illegal immigration and the possibility of an Ebola outbreak loom in the background ready to step into the breech. None of them good issues for the Democrats or for Obama.

As political consultants, candidates and armchair quarterbacks focus on each day's new polling in the 12 key battleground states, it is easy to ignore the macro developments that are shaping the race. But none of them are helpful to the president or to his Party's Senate candidates.