WASHINGTON: Republican leaders are warning party members against using overtly racist and sexist attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, as they and former President Donald Trump's campaign struggle to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic rival less than four months before Election Day.
In a closed-door meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson, RN.C., urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies.
“This election is going to be about politics and not personalities,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the meeting.
“This is not personal with respect to Kamala Harris,” he added, “and her ethnicity or her gender has nothing to do with this whatsoever.”
The warnings point to the new risks for Republicans running against a Democrat who would become the first woman, the first black woman and the first person of South Asian descent to win the White House. Trump, in particular, has a history of racist and misogynistic attacks that could turn off key groups of swing voters, including suburban women, as well as voters of color and younger people whom Trump's campaign has courted.
The admonitions came after some members and Trump allies began designating Harris, a former district attorney, attorney general and senator, as a “DEI” employee — a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“Intellectually, just kind of the bottom of the barrel,” Wyoming Representative Harriet Hageman said in a television interview. “I think she was a DEI employee. And I think that's what we're seeing and I just don't think they have anybody else.”
Since Biden announced he is leaving the campaign, Republicans have rolled out a long list of attack lines against Harris, including attempts to tie her to the most unpopular Biden policies and his handling of the economy and the southern border. Trump campaign officials and other Republicans have accused Harris of being complicit in a cover-up of Biden's health problems, and they have brought up her record as a California prosecutor as they try to paint her as soft on crime.
Johnson said both Trump and Harris have records in White House politics and said voters can compare how families fared under the Trump administration to how they are now under Biden.
“She's a co-owner, co-author, co-conspirator in all the politics that got us into this mess,” Johnson said.
Biden announced Sunday that he is withdrawing from the race. In a memo on the state of the race on Tuesday, Trump campaign watchdog Tony Fabrizio argued that the fundamentals of the campaign had not changed now that Harris appears increasingly likely to be the Democratic nominee.
“Democrats ousting one nominee for another does NOT change voter dissatisfaction with the economy, inflation, crime, the open border, housing costs not to mention concerns over two foreign wars,” he wrote. “Equally important, voters will also learn about Harris' dangerously liberal record before they become Biden's running mate.”
In similar messages, Hudson told members at Tuesday's meeting that the NRCC is focusing on how Harris is even more progressive than Biden and essentially “owns” all of the administration's policies, according to a person familiar with the conversation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss it.
Late. Steve Daines, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, echoed that criticism, calling Harris “too liberal.”
“She's not an Irish Catholic kid who grew up in Scranton. She's a liberal in San Francisco,” Daines said.
Trump offered a similar argument in talks with reporters on Tuesday.
“She's the same as Biden but a lot more radical. She's a radical leftist and this country doesn't want a radical leftist to ruin it. She's a lot more radical than he is,” he said.
“So I think she should be easier than Biden because he was a little more mainstream, but not much,” he added.
Later, in an interview on Newsmax, Trump claimed Harris “destroyed the city of San Francisco,” even though she left her job as district attorney there in 2011, calling her “the worst at everything.”
“Kamala Harris is as weak, failed and incompetent as Joe Biden — and she's also dangerously liberal,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. “Kamala not only has to defend her support of Joe Biden's failed agenda for the past four years, she also has to answer for her own appallingly weak criminal record in California.”
Trump has a long history of launching particularly scathing and personal attacks on women, from former Fox News host Megyn Kelly to his 2016 primary opponent Carly Fiorina to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued him and his company for fraud.
In a sign of things to come, Trump, in a Fourth of July message on his Truth Social network, took issue with Harris' poor performance in the 2020 Democratic primary, adding “that doesn't mean she's not a 'very talented' politician! Just ask her mentor, the great Willie Brown of San Francisco.” Harris dated Brown in the mid-1990s.
Strong and intelligent women who attack him seem to especially get under Trump's skin, said Stephanie Grisham, a 2016 campaign aide who served as Trump's White House press secretary for a time, before breaking with him after the attack on Jan. 6, 2021. US Capitol.
“She's going to get a big rise out of him,” Grisham predicted, noting that when Trump is attacked, “he hits 1,000 times harder. He's not going to be able to help himself.”
When it comes to women, she added: “His goal is to attack looks and to call women stupid. That's his goal and I don't expect this to be any different.”
Rope. Maxine Waters of California, who is a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus and was among the early Democrats to confront Trump, said she is well prepared for what lies ahead as Republicans turn the campaign on Harris.
“The first thing that comes to my mind is the attacks that are going to come from Trump, the MAGA right — which has already started,” Waters told the AP. “They're going to be nasty, they're going to be bad.”
She predicted that approach could backfire on Trump.
“The risk is that he is so arrogant and egotistical that he will step on women and it will backfire,” she said.
The momentum could increase on the debate stage, if Trump continues to debate Harris, as he said Thursday he would.
Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said Trump was unlikely to debate Harris the way he would debate Biden — or the way he debated another female rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, in 2016.
“I don't think Trump can approach a debate against Kamala Harris with the same tone that he approached the debate with Hillary Clinton. Kamala Harris doesn't have the negative qualities that Hillary had and she's a relatively new political face,” he said. Caution may be warranted.”
