Republican Researchers Target 2020 Democrats
. . . . .Their mantra is chaos
The Republican organization known as the America Rising Committee is tasked to get down and dirty in their search for anything and everything that Democratic candidates do or have done that could be used in getting the voting public to favor Trump.
As Democratic presidential candidates are busy giving press releases, engaging in town halls, making talk show appearances, and requesting campaign donations, this Republican organization is already aiming criticisms, innuendos, yellow journalism, and pseudo scandals at the candidates that they consider to be front runners.
While Barack Obama is warning progressives not to become a “circular firing squad” at this vulnerable time when presidential candidates are competing against one another, America Rising is finding as many ways as they can think of to get Democrats to demote and disrespect anyone who could win the presidential run against Donald Trump.
Among Democrats, the field of prospective presidential nominees has grown to almost 20, and they are all eager to appeal to their constituents. That is where America Rising comes into the picture. Their efforts are to define the Democratic field in advance of 2020, by attempting to paint each candidate as too flawed to be considered as better than Trump.
Working in conjunction with the Rebublican National Committee, America Rising has become the major clearing house for Republican oppositional research. Their work to present Democratic contenders as radicals, and to incite Democrats into becoming overly critical of their own candidates is ongoing. They push for fragmentation of the Democratic party, and in general cause as much chaos as possible.
The following excerpts from The Guardian provide a view of America Rising. Democrats may want to pay attention to what they are up to in order not to fall into their trap.
THE AMERICA RISING COMMITTEE MONITORS EVERYTHING DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES DO, HOPING THE LARGE FIELD WILL WORK IN TRUMP’S FAVOR
Democrats are more than a year away from selecting their presidential nominee. Nonetheless, Republicans are already taking aim at the leading contenders.
Even as the field swells to nearly two dozen, the other party is monitoring public appearances, requesting court records and dissecting past utterances. This is not an effort that involves dirty tricks or elaborate snooping. Instead, it involves a lot of young people watching a lot of C-Span.
The locus of the Republican effort to define the Democratic field in advance of 2020 is America Rising, a political action committee that has become a clearinghouse for GOP opposition research.
Sarah Dolan, its executive director, told the Guardian the group’s goal was to “hold Democrats accountable”. America Rising already has a war room team monitoring everything Democratic candidates do on social media, full-time trackers in early states following candidates from event to event, and an aggressive field research effort using Freedom Of Information Act (Foia) requests and primary documents.
Dolan said her group would not play favorites. Instead, she said: “Our mantra this cycle is really just to cause chaos, especially with how big the field is.”
In a change from past election cycles, she said, criticisms of Democratic candidates are not just coming from the right, painting candidates as out of touch with moderate voters. From the left come attempts to paint senators, representatives or governors as out of touch with the primary electorate.
Dolan pointed to a recent success: a New York Times article partially prompted by the group’s use of a Foia request to discover that the former vice-president Joe Biden charged $200,000 for a single private speech.
2016, America Rising used similar discoveries to launch attacks on Hillary Clinton. Criticisms of the former secretary of state’s paid speeches became staples not just of Republican rhetoric but of attacks from her chief rival in the Democratic primary, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.In 2019, such work is being done in conjunction with the Republican National Committee. Steve Guest, a spokesman, focused on the rise of progressive policies and politicians touting them when he told the Guardian: “What used to be extreme ideas on the fringe of the Democrat party just a few years ago have now become mainstream orthodoxy of the 2020 Democrat candidates.
“Despite their best efforts to present a sanitized narrative, our team is exposing their radical positions so voters know that the rhetoric does not match the reality.”
Another RNC staffer said the Democrats’ drift left had made their job easier. The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that when a candidate says something controversial, the RNC “blasts it out, reporters ask other candidates about it and usually they all agree”. The resulting coverage, said the aide, shows voters “just how far left” the Democrats are moving.
Whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee will probably have been wounded not just by Republicans but also by attacks from competitors in the primary. In past campaigns, some of the most bruising hits have come from intra-party foes.
Survive the primary, of course, and the Democratic nominee will have to face off against Trump. Czin said the president was “an oppo guy’s dream in a lot of ways”, but one who has somehow still proved invulnerable.
“He has a paper trail that’s a mile long, been involved in hundreds of lawsuits, there’s really so much to show how irresponsible and unqualified,” Czin said.
And yet, Trump “proved to be Teflon”.
