When Virginia Rep. Dave Brat is doing private GOP fundraisers in his conservative-leaning district, he brings GOP fire-breather Rep. Jim Jordan with him to stoke that aggrieved base. At a secretly recorded Sept. 7 event, Jordan's appearance included some rah-rah cheerleading for Donald Trump and his advice that "it's best in the vast majority of congressional seats to nationalize the election." In other words, definitely make Trump the centerpiece of your campaign.
It's advice no sane GOP strategist is giving to some 30 Republican members facing "toss up" races similar to Brat's firefight in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District against Democrat Abigail Spanberger.
But with audience members still chanting "lock her up" and "build the wall," Brat went all-in for Trump at the closed-door event. He even bragged about parroting Jordan when he does Fox News appearances and said Jordan would be a "good speaker [of the House]"—not to mention one who's currently mired in an ongoing sexual abuse scandal). Meanwhile, Brat's ads for the district are all puppies and sunshine, quite literally, writes Politico.
One of them features images of puppies playing with children, and a narrator touting the congressman's work “to stop a federal agency from conducting cruel medical research on dogs.”
That about sums up the line vulnerable Republicans are trying to walk: declaring their loyalty to Trump in GOP-only venues while putting out ads about their work on behalf of puppies and bi-partisan initiatives in the broader public.
"While House Republicans are struggling to publicly distance themselves from their own records, behind closed doors they're doubling down on an extreme, partisan agenda that would keep selling out America's middle class and working families to the richest taxpayers," Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Democrat-aligned super PAC American Bridge, told Politico.
Whatever they might be saying publicly, vulnerable House Republicans are privately promising to push Trump’s agenda to the hilt if it they manage to keep their seats.
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