By Rick Holmes
Nov. 16, 2021
Democrats are licking their wounds after losing in Virginia and wringing their hands over how to respond to the lies Republicans tell about Democrats. One especially effective lie in Virginia being the charge that “critical race theory” has infected Virginia’s schools and must be banned.
The response of national Democrats to that issue should be unequivocal: Keep politics out of the classroom. Leave instruction to teachers and parents. Schools should teach history, not Democrat history or Republican history. Politicians – and that means you, state legislators who want to Trumpify the textbooks – should keep their hands off the curricula.
On the larger gameboard, Democrats need to play offense. Instead of worrying about the lies Republicans tell about them, Democrats must tell the truth about Republicans.
The Republican Party has become something our conservative parents and grandparents wouldn’t recognize. It is now defined by what used to be its fringe, and Democrats should say so, loud and often. Here are the messages I’d put at the top of the list.
Republicans are extremists. Theirs has become the party of people who make death threats against school board members and local election officials; of people who pick fights with store clerks politely asking them to wear a mask; of people who want to free Kyle Rittenhouse and jail Anthony Fauci; of people who think Trump is still president and JFK Jr. is coming back to be his VP, of people who speak wistfully of secession and civil war.
2. Republicans are corrupt. Start with the millions of taxpayer dollars Donald Trump steered to Donald Trump’s pockets while president. Expose the sale of pardons and the scams he and his cronies have used to extort money from his supporters. Talk about Jared Kushner’s sweetheart deals with Saudi Arabia, Mitch McConnell’s Russian and Chinese conflicts of interest. Corruption was rampant in the Trump Administration, and the Republican swamp runs deep and wide. Democrats can’t politely wait on the courts before tying those scandals into a general indictment of the Republican Party.
3. Republicans don’t care if you get Covid. They politicized common public health practices, and found ways to be against every anti-Covid measure tried so far: lockdowns and social distancing, tests, masks, vaccine passports and vaccinations themselves. They reject the advice of their physicians in favor of some huckster on YouTube. Between Trump’s mismanagement and Republican resistance, hundreds of thousands of American lives have been lost. Democrats should brand the GOP the pro-Covid party.
4. Republicans are turning against democracy. A recent Marist poll found that just a third of Republicans will trust the accuracy of the 2024 election if their candidate doesn’t win. Trump, now the undisputed leader of the Republicans, is a sore loser who tried to rig the last two elections and is working on rigging the next. Trump’s base and his allies spent months trying to overturn a free and fair election, and, on Jan. 6, assaulted the constitutional transfer of power. Since then, the Republican Party has mostly sided with the insurrectionists. It’s Code Red time for American democracy, and it’s the Republicans’ fault.
I know what you’re thinking: Lots of Republicans don’t believe in conspiracies; they are good citizens who support the Constitution and the rule of law, and who were as upset as anyone at the events of Jan. 6. You may be friends with those Republicans, or even be one yourself. It may not feel fair to paint them with the same broad brush as the extremists and the Trumps. But this situation is too serious for Democrats to treat their opponents like they’d like to be treated. It’s time for Democrats to treat Republicans the way Republicans treat Democrats: Paint them all with broad brushes and stark colors. Brand them with Trump’s scandals and the lunatic fringe. Make them wear the label or denounce it.
Democrats need not despair about their electoral prospects. The leaders of the Republican Party – Trump, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and the House Q caucus – are not popular among large parts of the electorate. Republicans are divided, with a primary season ahead that will force every candidate to dance with Trump and the extremist base, likely producing a crop of inexperienced candidates from the GOP fringe.
There’s no reason Democrats can’t win in states like Georgia, Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio. They’ll have a great record to run on and they stand squarely with public opinion on most issues. Democrats who assume midterm losses are inevitable should add to their precedents 1962, when they gained four Senate seats in the first midterms of John F. Kennedy’s presidency.
But the Democrats won’t win unless they can create a narrative that sticks in voters’ minds, describing the opposition for what it is. Republicans are extremist, corrupt and a danger to democracy. Say it loud and say it often. Make Republicans pay a price for veering so far from the mainstream.