When you can't go high, go low. More than ever this year that's the GOP strategy to save the House in an environment where Donald Trump is a crippling liability in swing districts and Republicans haven't delivered much of anything for 99 percent of American households.
Along with the National Republican Congressional Committee running ads that smear Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and liberalism, the GOP's Congress Leadership Fund super PAC is combing through the personal and professional biographies of Democratic candidates looking for anything they can use to mar their credibility, writes Politico.
So far they've gone after a Democrat running to represent Speaker Paul Ryan's district, Randy Bryce, for a DUI and several other arrests, including driving on a suspended license.
Bryce apologized in a statement to CNN in July, saying: “There is no excuse for what I did 20 years ago when I got behind the wheel and operated under the influence.”
And there's New Jersey Democratic nominee Mikie Sherrill, who has served as a Navy helicopter pilot and a federal prosecutor.
“Mikie Sherrill claims to have the best interests of children in mind, but as a lawyer, she negotiated a deal with someone who knowingly distributed child pornography,” one research memo reads.
Sherrill’s campaign manager Mollie Binotto called the attack “absurd,” adding in a statement, “all it shows is a bankrupt Republican agenda in Washington that can’t defend its record to voters on taxes, health care or infrastructure."
Yep, they're going to throw everything AND the kitchen sink at these Democratic upstarts who have no voting record to be seized on. Democrats actually tried a somewhat similar tact in 2010, when they suffered a sweeping midterm loss of over 60 flipped seats. Here's what a former DCCC official involved with that 2010 strategy says about it now.
“You win elections by meeting voters where they are, not by trying to convince them something else matters that’s not relevant to their life."
