As Republicans accelerate their anti-Kamala Harris campaign, they are having difficulty finding a consistent line of attack.
In recent days, Republicans have criticized the vice president for everything from her handling of immigration and her past as a prosecutor to her “terrible,” “horrible” and “evil” behavior. On Wednesday, Donald Trump called Harris a “radical, left-wing lunatic” and then labeled her “nasty” in an interview with Fox News the next day — an echo of the insults Trump directed at Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Trump’s allies, however, have argued that she is actively involved in a conspiracy to hide Biden’s apparent decline or that she is just another Biden. Some engaged in explicitly racist and sexist attacks, calling her “DEI rental” Or criticizing her for not having biological children. Others say she laughs too much. More criticized her for endorsing consumer policies, such as a ban on plastic straws and the consumption of red meat. AND none of your rivals they seem willing to pronounce her name correctly.
“They are literally grasping at straws,” said Michael Brodkorb, former vice chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party. “Republicans desperately wanted to run against Joe Biden. … The introduction of Harris into the race, I think, upended their attacks and their strategies.”
The breadth and lack of cohesion in the Republican attack on Harris reflects the newness of her candidacy — but also the difficulty GOPers are having adjusting to a candidate who has a different profile than the 81-year-old white man they would have. planning a race against for years.
On the day Biden dropped out and Harris announced her campaign, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley suggested on Fox News that the move would not alter Republicans’ broader messaging.
“We’re not going to change our plans because President Trump is going to run his race, and whether it’s Kamala Harris or anyone else, they’re going to run on the exact same failed agenda that Joe Biden has been running for the last four years,” he said.
But once Harris came in, Republicans were all over the map. Just hours after she announced her candidacy, Trump’s super PAC released an ad attacking Harris, claiming that she “covered up Joe’s obvious mental decline” and that she “knew Joe couldn’t do the job, so she did it herself.” . (The White House disputed reports that aides isolated Biden to hide signs of decline.)
Then the attacks revolved around Harris’ identity.
A 2021 clip of Trump’s now-running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), calling Harris and other Democrats “a bunch of hot ladies without kids who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they have made and that is why they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”, began to circulate on social media. (One of Harris’ two stepchildren, Ella Emhoff, responded Thursday on Instagram, writing, “How can you not have kids when you have cute kids like Cole and me … I love all three of my parents.”)
Representative. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) both called Harris a “DEI hire” in interviews. Representative. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) said, “many Democrats feel they have to stand with her because of her ethnic background.”
On Tuesday, House Republican leaders issued caucus members a warning in a closed-door meeting to focus on Harris’ record, not her race. The call came after Trump provoked a fake birth conspiracy regarding Harris’ 2020 eligibility.
Other Republicans, avoiding issues of race and gender, focused on defining Harris as an ultra-progressive politician from San Francisco who is “SMOOTH AS CHARMIN”On crime and other issues. On a interview with CNN on Tuesday, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas repeatedly called Harris a “San Francisco liberal,” Cotton continued, criticizing Harris for her approach to crime, accusing her of opposing the death penalty, supporting protesters and freeing prison criminals when she was a California lawyer. in general.
This is a change in approach from Trump’s 2020 campaign, which pushed competing messages on Harris’ record on crime, simultaneously accusing her of being too harsh and too lenient in prosecuting criminals.
“They’re testing a lot of different messages, they haven’t really narrowed down what resonates, what interests people,” said Jason Roe, a Republican strategist in the battleground state of Michigan. “It’s still pretty undefined and I think there’s still a lot of definition to be provided.”
He added, “Republicans are throwing everything in to see what works” and suggested there will be more to come.
“We haven’t reached her time as a senator, attorney general or San Francisco prosecutor yet,” Roe said, predicting that “there will be some good red meat on her record there.”
One thing Republicans have almost universally seized on is Harris’s handling of immigration, after the first year of her vice presidency was dominated by an assignment she received from Biden to address the root causes of migration from countries across the Americas. Central to the United States. The White House described Harris’ indictment as “diplomatic” at a press conference on Thursday — and not as an indictment of her becoming the administration’s “border czar,” as many Republicans have labeled her.
But maintaining a disciplined message against Harris on immigration has also proven difficult for both Trump and his allies. The former president didn’t mention her handling of the border once during an interview with “Fox & Friends” on Monday, though he was quick to accuse her of wanting to “defund the police”; describe it as “terrible”, “horrible” and “evil”; and call her a “San Francisco radical.” Neither Biden nor Harris’ campaign platforms outlined support for defunding the police, although Harris has been in favor of broader criminal justice reform.
Trump then tried to reverse the emerging contrast between “prosecutor and criminal” sought by Harris, arguing that she is too soft on some but harsh in punishing her political enemies.
“They say, ‘I’m a prosecutor. He is a criminal. They are the only ones. Every case is brought by them, and I’m winning the cases,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.”
Despite claiming an intention to focus on policy rather than personality, a memo released by the National Republican Senatorial Committee on Monday includes a category about Harris simply labeled “weird.” The NRSC memo criticizes Harris for “laughing at inappropriate times,” loving Venn diagrams and electric school buses, and endorsing consumer policies such as banning plastic straws and eating red meat.
The roots of some of these attacks – including the use of the Harris strategy laugh at campaign ads — were repurposed by Democrats, designed to make her seem understandable to a mass audience. The Trump campaign even tried to capitalize on some of the Charli XCX and coconut-themed videos that turned Harris into a viral meme.
At the same time that the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania was being praised for an ad that linked his opponent to Harris’ liberal ideology, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told reporters that Trump He wasn’t a “kid” — referring to the neon green, hyper-pop album from the artist who became associated with the vice president.
“President Trump tells the truth and there is nothing more unifying than telling the truth about a weak, failed, incompetent and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris and her destructive policies,” Cheung wrote in response to a request for comment.
Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant based in California, described the lack of an established line of attack against Harris as a reflection of insufficient data so early in her campaign about which attacks will resonate.
But that’s a problem Democrats have too, he said, especially regarding their aggressiveness in defining Harris as a prosecutor.
“This probably isn’t a complete alt-control, but it resets the data that everyone was focused on for this election, and I think that’s true on both sides,” Stutzman said.
What the data says about how best to define Harris, he said, is “both a D question and an R question.”
This story originally appeared on Politico.com read the full story
