Republicans, Strategists Differ On Ways To Beat Back Racism Accusations From Dems
Congressional Republicans have a plan for Democrats’ repeated claim that White supremacists infest the Republican Party: silence.
Challenging accusations of racism and White supremacism is pointless because it won’t stop the name-calling, Republican lawmakers say, but sooner or later the Democrats will go too far.
Republican political strategists warned that Mr. Biggs and his colleagues are making a huge mistake.
Pushing back against accusations of racism is a stronger play, said Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist.
“It’s a reasonable fear,” Mr. O’Connell said. “But I don’t think they understand how Democrats move the goal posts in this arbitrary narrative of White supremacy. Eventually, they are going to have to confront the White supremacy allegations head-on because if you allow Democrats to go on and on the public will continue to believe it.”
RNC Leaders Stand By Trump's Effort To Remake Party: 'Nobody's Turning On Trump Here'
Republican Party officials from across the country are not blaming President Trump for the party’s defeats in Georgia’s runoffs but instead are rallying to make election security its top priority in the next cycle.
At the Republican National Committee Winter Meeting in Amelia Island, Florida, party officials remained steadfast Wednesday in support of Mr. Trump and his remake of the party, despite the election setbacks that gave Democrats a Senate majority and complete control of the levers of power in Washington.
Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist with close ties to the White House, said the mayhem at the Capitol shouldn’t take away from legitimate concerns about election integrity.
“Those issues aren’t going to go away,” he said. “The Democrats do not want to have this discussion.”
Mr. Trump and his allies failed in scores of lawsuits challenging the election results in battleground states.
GOP Pushes Back As Trump Divides Party With Electoral College Challenge
President Trump has once again slashed a dividing line through the heart of the Republican Party with his demand that lawmakers reject the results of the Nov. 3 election, but this time the pushback is stronger.
Many erstwhile Trump allies say he has finally gone too far and asked too much. Seeking to upend President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s victory threatens the very foundations of America’s electoral democracy, they say.
Desperate to remain in office and convinced, despite a lack of evidence, that the election was stolen from him, Mr. Trump has asked Congress to reject the electoral votes of some states he lost to Mr. Biden and to deliver a second term to him.
Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist, said Republican voters are likely to support the fight.
“Obviously, the base of the Republican Party is in lockstep with Trump. They believe this election was stolen from them,” he said.
That feeling goes beyond the vote counting to include disparate media treatment of Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden and the role large social media companies played in censoring Republicans.
“I think Josh Hawley has a brilliant argument to make,” he said. “All we’re talking about is having a debate on the floor.”
Trump's Swagger And Showmanship Have Forever Altered The Republican Party Of Reagan
President Trump, eyeing a screaming throng of supporters in Arizona last week, ventured into what would have been considered GOP blasphemy a decade ago.
“We all liked Ronald Reagan, but nobody ever said, ‘We love you. We love you. We love you,’ ” the president said in Bullhead City. “And he wouldn’t get crowds like this. If Ronald Reagan — who I consider to be top-notch — if he came here, he’d have a couple hundred people legitimately … we’re having 25, 30, 35, 40, 45,000 people.”
The crowd cheered.
"What Trump has taught Republicans is to have a backbone and a spine,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist with close ties to the White House. “Don’t back down from the media and the Democrats when you get double-teamed on a particular idea.”
GOP Banks On Trump-Voter Turnout Amid Fears Of Flipped Senate
Republicans are worried that a Democratic takeover of the Senate is increasingly likely, and many are hoping for high turnout of President Trump’s conservative base in key states as the party’s last, best chance to hold on to power.
Polling in several Senate races, as well as in the presidential campaign, has turned so grim for Republicans that lobbyists in Washington are “game planning” for Democratic control of both the Senate and the White House. Democrats already hold a majority in the House and are likely to gain seats there.
Although some Republican candidates have tried to distance themselves from Mr. Trump in recent days, Republican Partyconsultant Ford O’Connell said that strategy is “a fool’s errand.”
“Control of the Senate is almost directly tied to the presidential race,” Mr. O’Connell said. “If Trump wins the state, it’s very, very likely that the Republican [Senatecandidate] is going to win that state as well. If Trump wins North Carolina, Tillis wins. I don’t see a way that McSally wins Arizona without Trump winning Arizona. It’s clear that Republicans are voting for Donald Trump first and foremost.”
Harvard Poll Finds Americans Receptive To Law-And-Order Message
Voters want to see immigrants with criminal records deported, rioters and looters arrested and prosecuted, and border security stiffened, according to a Harvard poll that suggests there is ample room for President Trump to sell his law-and-order message — if he can break through questions about his character.
More than two-thirds of those surveyed by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies/Harris pollhave a favorable opinion of police, compared with 51% for the Black Lives Matter movement. Antifa, the left-wing “anti-fascist” movement, has just 14% approval.
About three-fourths want to see the border tightened and want to see illegal immigrants who commit crimes deported rather than protected, as sanctuary cities do.
But Ford O’Connell, a Republican Party strategist with close ties to the White House, said Mr. Trump can win by hammering home an issues-based message about his record over the past four years and his plans for the next four.
“From economic stewardship to law and order to tighter border security to no more crippling economic shutdowns — the issues are overwhelmingly on President Trump’s side,” he said. “And rather than trying to out-personality Biden, which there’s nothing wrong with, Trump would be better served by challenging Biden on the issues and reminding voters what he has done and where he wants to go.”
Lyft's Urban Voter-Turnout Plan In 5 Battleground States Sparks Conservative Outrage
Ride-sharing company Lyft’s new turn-out-the vote effort in cities in five battleground states has sparked outrage from conservatives who think it is a ploy to help Democrats win in November.
Lyft has formed a partnership with More Than A Vote, an advocacy group led by Black athletes including basketball player LeBron James, to provide free and discounted rides to polling locations in major cities in five key battlegrounds: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Lyft did not answer a question about whether it would provide comparable ride-sharing transportation to rural voters as it plans to do for urban voters in the five cities targeted by More Than A Vote.
Republican strategist Ford O’Connell, who formerly ran for Congress in Florida, said Thursday he thought Democrats may undermine Lyft’s voter-turnout efforts by their vocal push for mail-in ballots that have created fear about in-person voting.
“Normally, I would be extremely concerned about this because it’s geared toward almost exclusively turning out Democratic votes. That said, Democrats have turned away the vast majority of their voters from in-person voting,” Mr. O’Connell said. “They’ve scared [voters], but at the same time, it is a weapon in their arsenal. The only question is whether they choose to promote it.”
Republican Revolt: Anti-Trump Insurgents Choose 'Country Over Party,' Defect To Biden
The Trumpian rift in the Republican Party has deepened in recent days as allies of one of the former Republican presidents and former White House nominees have taken steps to endorse the Democrat.
The Republican anti-Trump forces willfully overlook the president’s wins on the conservative scorecard, including cutting taxes, appointing hundreds of conservative judges, confronting illegal immigration and rebuilding the military, said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist closely allied with the White House.
“The fact that they are going to throw that all away out of spite makes you questions whether they are actually conservatives,” he said.
Mr. O’Connell said that beating Mr. Trump in November would not turn back the clock for the Republican Party.
“The party is going to carry forward a lot of the things Trump taught them. The number one thing Trump taught them was to have a backbone. For years, Republicans did not have a backbone,” he said. “They are not getting their party back.”
Mr. O’Connnell said the old school establishment that opposes the president has lost touch with the party’s base.
“Here’s what these people miss and what the Republican grassroots have figured out,” he said, “We can always get a new set of leaders. We can’t get a new set of grassroots. If you ignore your grassroots, you’re ignoring your party to its own political peril.”
Former Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick Enters 2020 Presidential Race
Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who jumped into the Democratic presidential race Thursday, was immediately fending off questions about his ties to Bain Capital, the same investment firm that was a major liability for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid.
Mr. Patrick has resigned from the firm, but his connections could make liberal activists wary of a candidate with such deep ties to private equity in a race where villainizing capitalism and the wealthy has become mainstream.
In 2012, President Obama and his allies used Mr. Romney’s experience at the firm, which also engaged in corporate takeovers, as fodder to attack Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat who wouldn’t hesitate to shut down factories or ship jobs overseas if it improved the company’s bottom line.
Mr. Patrick, who counts Mr. Obama as a close ally and who was a key surrogate during his 2012 reelection bid, actually got crosswise with the campaign’s messaging at one point by defending the firm.
Mr. Patrick’s past business ties could end up out of place in a race that features Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernard Sanders of Vermont, who have enthralled far-left activists by running on anti-corporate platforms and calls to impose significant new taxes on the wealthy.
“They’re already going after it anyway, whether or not they use the word ‘Bain,’” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell.
Mr. Patrick, the first black governor of Massachusetts who served as the commonwealth’s chief executive from 2007-2015, announced his presidential bid on Thursday after he had said last December he would not run for president in 2020, citing the “cruelty” of the process that would affect people close to him.
Trump, GOP Develop Impeachment Strategy, Hit 'Desperate' Democrats For Advancing Probe
President Trump and his allies will fight impeachment in the halls of Congress and over the airwaves by attacking Democrats’ partisan motives, making their case particularly for white voters in battleground states that the president is a victim of “unhinged” liberal hatred, sources close to the president said.
The president huddled with more than a dozen House Republican lawmakers at the White House on Thursday, hours after House Democrats approved a measure to move forward with an impeachment investigation centered on Mr. Trump’s overtures to Ukraine’s leader to investigate 2020 Democratic presidential front-runner Joseph R. Biden.
“The Democrats are desperate,” Mr. Trump told a British interviewer after the vote. “They’re going to try and win the election this way, because they can’t win it the fair way.”
While Republicans can’t stop the impeachment probe, they can escalate their barrage of criticism that the investigation is illegitimate and fundamentally unfair, supporters of the president say. Regardless of a vote to impeach the president, the strategy — coming soon to TV — will help him in a handful of states that will decide the 2020 election, they say.
“Essentially it’s about a PR campaign that is meant for about 10 percent of the persuadable voters in a total of about six states — Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, a little bit of Minnesota, North Carolina, Arizona,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said. “We’re really talking about a giant PR battle that’s going to carry over to the ballot box, more so than the actual trial itself.”
By a 52% to 44% margin, registered voters in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin said they oppose impeaching and removing Mr. Trump from office.
Said Mr. O’Connell, “The fact that he’s an incumbent gives him advantages. The party apparatus is going to walk in lock step with him. And he’s got a lot of money. If he comes out on top, it could be his best reelection ad.”
Mr. O’Connell said there was another piece of “great news” hidden in the House party-line vote: even the dozen or so “Never Trump” Republican lawmakers in the House voted with the president.
“The rules that were set up by Pelosi and Schiff were so bad, you even got the ‘Never Trump‘ Republicans to agree with Trump,” he said. “The Republicans are going to drive home over and over that the Democrats are violating historic precedent, they are violating the president’s due process, and that the Democrats have pre-planned this from day one.”
