The GOP has decided to use failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a main part of its midterm strategy in order to keep control of Congress this year. From Fox News:
Even if she avoids the spotlight moving forward, the Republican Party plans to evoke her early and often in key congressional races, particularly in regions Trump won, which feature most of the midterm season’s competitive races.Internal polling and focus groups conducted by Republican campaigns find that Clinton remains one of the most unpopular high-profile Democrats in the nation, second only to Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader.Just 36 percent of Americans viewed Clinton favorably in a December Gallup poll, an all-time low mark that bucked a trend in which unsuccessful presidential candidates typically gain in popularity over time.“We’re going to make them own her,” Republican National Committee spokesman Rick Gorka said.
This line of attack has already shown up in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Dakota. Pamphlets circled around Pennsylvania for its special election in its 18th district a few months ago shouted, “STOP HILLARY. STOP PELOSI. STOP LAMB.”
Democrat Conor Lamb ended up winning that special election despite all the money the GOP poured into it. From the Associated Press:
“I promise you that you’ll continue to see it — Hillary Clinton starring in our paid media. She’s a very powerful motivator,” said Corry Bliss, who leads the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super political action committee ready to spend tens of millions of dollars to shape House races this fall. “It’s about what she represents. What she represents, just like what Nancy Pelosi represents, is out-of-touch far-left liberal positions.”
Of course it doesn’t help that Hillary doesn’t want to leave the spotlight. As the AP noted, “she launched a political organization designed to encourage Trump ‘resistance’ groups” and still makes appearances. She still won’t accept responsibility for losing the election and instead places blame everywhere else.
But it still shocks me that the GOP has decided to take this route considering the Democrats and her former aides don’t want much to do with her. Hillary received a lot of backlash last month when she visited India and implied that us in flyover country hate black people and us women who didn’t vote for her did so because the men in our lives told us not to.
Some of that backlash came from the Democrats and those around her. An interviewer asked Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) when Hillary would finally “ride off into the sunset” and the incumbent answered, “[N]ot soon enough.” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said that that’s not the way “you should talk about any voter.”
Instead I wish the GOP would concentrate on the victories they’ve had since Trump took office. Give voters a reason to keep the GOP in the majority.
Look at the jobs reports just from 2018. March was a cool month, but the economy added more than a half a million jobs in the first two months of 2018. Unemployment is still at a low 4.1%.
While March didn’t have a spectacular jobs report, the Commerce Department revealed that US retail sales jumped .6% after three straight months of declines. So more people are finding jobs, which has led to people pumping more money into the economy.
Then there’s North Korea. On Friday, the hermit kingdom will meet with South Korea and supposedly they will work on an actual end to the six decade long Korean War. Not only that, but North Korea has announced that it suspended nuclear and long-range missile tests. Kemberlee’s post from Friday provided expert analysis on this move.
President Donald Trump has planned a summit with dictator Kim Jong Un in May. He described the recent moves as “big process,” but knows more happen. He will ask the dictator “to dismantle the country’s nuclear arsenal without conceding significant ground on economic sanctions.”
However, it looks like Trump has done a lot more on North Korea, the most brutal and awful regime in the world, in his first year than anyone else before him. I would hope if good things come from the summit, the GOP will run on that. Granted, I don’t trust anything North Korea says.
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