The start of President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in the Senate on a single charge of inciting a U.S. Capitol insurrection comes while the Republican Party is under siege.
While the Republican Party struggles with its future and Trump’s role in it, Democrats are taking advantage of the deep divisions within the Republican ranks over their right wing and seeking to define the party’s front line by its most extremist members.
The House Democrats’ campaign apparatus deployed $ 500,000 for an advertising campaign tying Congressman Kevin McCarthy, R-California, the minority leader, and seven vulnerable Republicans in the districts that President Joe Biden won last year for the extremist rhetoric of rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and the QAnon Conspiracy Theory.
The Democrats’ initial shot accuses Republicans in the undecided district of being “with Q, not with you.”
“Washington Republicans made their choice – they chose to give in to the murderous QAnon crowd that took over their party,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, DN.Y., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They are “refusing to hold those responsible for the Capitol attack accountable, offering nothing but empty words after years of lies and conspiracy theories.”
The Washington Post fact checker wrote that the effort to tie members to conspiracy theory is “misleading”, but all eight voted against Trump’s second impeachment, caused by the former president’s own rhetoric before a crowd of his supporters marched to the Capitol in an effort to thwart the certification of Biden’s victory. And while some have criticized Trump’s conduct, fewer have voted against certifying electoral votes for at least one of the two battlegrounds – Arizona and Pennsylvania – based on unfounded allegations of fraud repeatedly defended by Trump and the extreme flank. right.
“We need to hold these Republicans accountable,” said former Democratic deputy Donna Shalala, who lost her Miami-based district last year to the now deputy. Maria Elvira Salazar, one of the Republicans targeted by the Democrats’ new ads.
Democratic strategist Ian Russell called the initial presentation to voters a “traffic test” of messages and praised Maloney for the initial attack.
“I think it’s a smart move,” Russell told ABC News on Monday. “President Maloney is capitalizing on fracture lines within the Republican Party. They have cracks in his coalition and he is attacking them with a crowbar and demonstrating to the American people, demonstrating to voters, that Republicans are on the side of extremists. that invaded Capitol, that support all these opinions that will not go down well in districts across America. “
While Republicans defend themselves from Democratic attacks under the newly installed chair, they are also thinking about how to reconcile their differences internally in the post-Trump era.
Their ability to come together in the next two years, some strategists say, will be crucial in determining their success in regaining the majority they lost in the 2018 midterm elections.
“The Republican brand has been attacked by Trump and a little bit of recent extremism … this has been a consequence of Trumpism,” said Ken Spain, a former senior official on the National Republican Congress Committee. “Republicans need to unite around an economic argument that is likely to resonate with voters two years from now.
Even with Democrats removing a page from its manual, the Republican Party is making clear its plans to continue the offensive of the cultural war against its rivals.
“We will continue to hammer the House Democrats for their socialist agenda of killing jobs and leaving marginal conspiracies for the DCCC,” said Michael McAdams, NRCC communications director, in a statement indicating that the campaign arm will remain in 2020 strategy.
Over the last cycle, the GOP relentlessly marked Democratic candidates like the party to “strip the police” in an effort to bring the more moderate members into sync with the progressive wing, the party has dramatically narrowed the majority of Democrats in the House.
Shalala admitted that the Republicans’ strategy “certainly was” effective in drowning out the health care message from Democrats in the last cycle. Looking ahead, when the party defends its thin margin next year, Democrats should give voters a reason to vote for them and not just against Republicans, she said.
“The campaigns are not about the candidates. They are to improve people’s lives, ”she said. “We cannot win by tying each Republican just to the right.”
“We need substantive things that we did. And since we control both houses, as well as the presidency, Democrats will be able to say, ‘Look, this is what happens when you elect Democrats. You will throw your vote away if you elect one. Republican ‘, ”she continued.
Shalala highlighted Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which Congressional Democrats are in the process of drafting, as a resounding issue and one of the ways in which Democrats are improving the lives of their constituents.
“And the Democrats will get full credit for that,” she said.
The Democrats’ move to capitalize on the open wounds within the Republican caucus comes in search of a new polarizing figure after Trump, who can be just as unifying and energizing to the base as the former president.
“With Trump disappearing from the scene, Democrats need a Boogeyman, or in this case, a woman,” said Spain.
But, like Shalala, the Republican strategist is not convinced that the Democrats’ inaugural strategy will influence voters on their own.
“It is likely to make some Republicans squirm,” said Spain, “but in the end you are linking the actions of an obscure member to an entire party and that will be difficult to do.”
Spain compared Democrats’ efforts to a similar campaign they waged in 2009, when “Democrats tried to tie Republican members to Sarah Palin (and) the 2010 elections had nothing to do with Sarah Palin.”
“This is unlikely to have a significant impact on the outcome of the 2022 elections,” he continued, with Democrats controlling all three levers of power. “2022 will be a referendum on Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress. Period.”
But that obscure member caused headaches for the GOP and reflects the greater division within the party over whether they should continue to align with Trump or stay away from him.
Last week, McCarthy decided not to punish Greene, who said he spoke to Trump and was “grateful for his support” at the height of calls for his expulsion for his history of incendiary comments – ranging from endorsing violence against Democrats, spreading false allegations about school shootings and QAnon’s conspiracy theories. Greene has since expressed regret for some of his earlier comments from the House floor, but has never offered an explicit apology for his conduct.
The Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s approach, however, differed from his House counterpart. He suggested that Greene’s adoption of conspiracy theories was tantamount to “cancer” in the party. McCarthy left it to the Democrats to penalize the first-year arsonist, and Greene was stripped of her committees in a House vote, in which 11 Republicans broke through the ranks and joined the Democrats to remove her from two committee assignments.
Russell said the Republican Party does not appear to be reevaluating itself after losing the White House and Senate or getting rid of its former leader.
“Both parties, after losing a national election, dusted off the dust … and found a way back,” he said. “What you’ve seen since the election, however, is the Republicans folding Trumpian chaos. Marjorie Taylor Greene, QAnon, all of these are symptoms of the underlying disease, which is the chaos that lies at the heart – which has taken over modern conservatism and the modern Republican Party. “
“That’s all they have in the fuel tank now,” he said of adopting Trump’s policy. “And it won’t get you very far.”
Party leaders may be keeping the course, but in the eyes of the Americans, the Republican Party is facing a broader perception issue with its extremist factions.
In a new ABC News / Ipsos poll, Americans say there are more radical extremists within the Republican Party than in the Democratic Party by a 17-point margin. And many more Democrats – 80% – think that there are more radical extremists in the Republican Party than yours, while 57% of Republicans say the same about the Democratic Party.
To further complicate matters for Republicans, there is the flow of pensions from within his conference, most recently from Sens Republicans. Rob Portman and Richard Shelby, two figures of the establishment within the party. They are unlikely to be the last, said Russell, as the ads are fueling forecasts for more Republican pensions in the coming months.
“With the center of gravity at the House conferences so far to the right, it will become an increasingly difficult place for traditional conservatives,” said Russell. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were to see some of the older members … realize that this is not an environment with which they can do anything.”