So the Massachusetts 2018 Senate race now is on the radar. Can anyone beat Elizabeth Warren?
As reported months ago, Warren’s polling is weak, but let’s be serious here, it will be a monumental task for a Republican to defeat Warren. As in the race against Scott Brown, Warren can count on a flood of money coming her way, and it’s liberal Massachusetts. While Brown ran a credible race, I always said that short of Warren being caught on video murdering someone, Massachusetts liberals were going to vote for her.
Warren also is a highly underestimated politician. She is the expert at playing the victim card, exploiting people’s envies, and engaging in bombastic personal attacks.
While it’s a monumental task, it’s not impossible.
So what role will Warren’s false claim to be Native American play in the upcoming contest? (See ElizabethWarrenWiki.org for the history and evidence of Warren’s deception.)
One challenger, V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, is running on a platform that only a real Indian (from India) can beat a fake Indian. He even challenged Warren to take a DNA test. (Even a positive DNA test would not resolve the issue, but that’s a discussion for another time.) But Ayyadurai’s nascent campaign took a huge hit recently when a 10-year old domestic abuse arrest was uncovered. Whether he can recover from that remains to be seen.
The more traditional political challenger is Geoff Diehl. He’s been a Massachusetts state representative and early and vocal Trump supporter. I haven’t delved deeply into Diehl’s career and positions, but based on what I’m seeing on Twitter, it seems he stands to pick up a lot of Trump supporters.
Diehl has focused heavily on Warren’s showboating and preparation for a 2020 presidential run, as this Boston Globe article notes:
Massachusetts Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl formally launched his candidacy to unseat incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren Tuesday, saying she’s too focused on grabbing the spotlight while accomplishing little for the state’s voters.Diehl, who served as co-chair of President Donald Trump’s campaign in Massachusetts, made the announcement in his hometown of Whitman.“I think there’s an expectation in Massachusetts that senators and congressmen and women who go to D.C. should work for the people of Massachusetts,” Diehl told The Associated Press before the announcement. “What we’ve had for the past four and a half years is someone who’s had her own agenda and is raising her profile to run for president in two years.”
Assuming — and it’s early, I know — that Diehl emerges as the Republican challenger, what will he make of Warren’s Cherokee problem?
Diehl certainly seems conversant with the issue, as this interview with the Boston Herald demonstrates:
As someone who considers himself one of a handful of experts on Warren’s ethnic deception, I found Diehl’s discussion to evidence a much deeper understanding of what Warren did than any other politician I’ve heard talk about it.
But what will Diehl make of it in the campaign? According to Diehl’s interview with Joe Battenfeld at The Boston Herald, not much, Geoff Diehl declares Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry not a target:
Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s claims of Cherokee Indian ancestry remain a question hanging over her political career — and a frequent target for President Trump — but don’t expect Republican state Rep. Geoff Diehl to make it a punch line in his campaign.Diehl, in an interview on the “Battenfeld” show on Boston Herald Radio, said while he’s “concerned” about Warren’s use of her purported Native American background, he won’t be pushing it on the stump like Trump.“She has plenty of other things that look to be sort of hypocritical,” said Diehl, a Republican state representative from Whitman who officially launched his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign a week ago.“I don’t think I have to bring it up,” he added. “Most people seem to know what happened with that situation.”
Here’s the full interview:
Diehl may be right that HE doesn’t need to make it a focus of the campaign.
In many ways, Warren’s ethnic fakery already is baked into Warren’s political persona, both because of the 2012 Senate campaign and more recently, Donald Trump’s branding of Warren as “Pocahontas.” I explored this branding of Warren a few months ago, Trump branding of Elizabeth Warren as Fake Indian continues, expecting her to run in 2020.
Battenfeld also points out that the Native American issue didn’t help Brown (I disagree strongly with that) and in any event, others will hammer Warren on the issue:
While some Republicans may not like to hear that from Diehl, it’s probably a smart move. Focusing on the Native American issue didn’t help former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown in his race against Warren, and may have even played against him. Warren got to claim that Brown was attacking her “family” — even though he clearly wasn’t — and running a negative campaign.And it’s highly likely that Republican super PACs targeting Warren will be weighing in on the Cherokee question, so Diehl himself can stay out of the fray.
So Warren’s Cherokee fakery will be in play, but maybe not directly from Diehl.
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