“Washington Republicans are finally acknowledging the obvious – a tax law that benefits corporations that offshore American jobs, blows up the deficit, and compromises Social Security & Medicare does not make a winning campaign message,” said Drew Godinich, DCCC spokesperson. “It’s clear that they are willing to do anything to distract from the political albatross that is the GOP Tax Scam, including appealing to our lowest and darkest biases.”
—-
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
If taxes aren’t working, will desperate Republicans keep turning to race-based attacks?
Vox // Tara Golshan
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/6/17179690/tax-cut-message-republican-race-attacks-2018
Republicans are trying to get Americans excited about their tax bill, but it’s a tough sell.
Even President Donald Trump tossed out prepared remarks on taxes at a roundtable in West Virginia this week. Holding them up, he said, “That would’ve been a little boring,” then tossed them away.
Trump’s quip got laughs, but congressional Republicans who are trying to win in 2018 on a tax cuts message may not find it funny.
Their list of major legislative accomplishments is shorter than they anticipated: They’ve got tax cuts and a conservative Supreme Court justice. While Republicans’ tax plan is more popular today than it was when Trump signed it into law, Democrats continue to sweep once safely red races. Republicans are growing increasingly concerned that tax cuts might not be enough.
“It’s all they’ve got. It’s a one-trick pony,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Politico. “It’s the tax pony, and that’s the only horse they have to ride.”
[…]
But in the field, we’ve seen a different kind of messaging crisis management. In the Trump era of Republican politics, the backup plan to an ineffective economic message has been to wage a culture war.
Fearmongering and race-baiting about MS-13 gangs, Confederate statues, and sanctuary cities are divisive messages that worked for Trump. When polls tighten, we’ve seen Republicans turn to these messages in the final weeks of the race. It’s just not clear it will stanch the bleeding.
The retreat to a race war hasn’t worked
Republicans had an early test of their 2018 messaging in early March. A special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th District — the first after Trump signed the GOP tax cuts into law — was supposed to be a safe Republican race. It was a rural, very white district that Trump had won by 20 points. In spite of all that, Democrat Conor Lamb prevailed.
The loss was interpreted as a major wake-up call for a party that was dead set on putting tax cuts front and center. At the beginning of February, almost two-thirds of GOP ads in the race were about the Republican tax law, according to a Politico analysis. Outside groups spent more than $7 million largely on that message.
[…]
When it became clear that it wasn’t enough to secure the lead, Republicans made a sharp pivot; Trump’s March rally for Saccone called on Congress to defund so-called sanctuary cities. By Election Day, the same group’s campaign for Saccone had pivoted sharply to decrying sanctuary cities, as Politico reported:
Since the beginning of March, tax ads have been essentially non-existent. Only two are on the air now — one from the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action which briefly mentions the tax law, and a radio ad from a progressive group attacking Saccone for supporting the law.
It didn’t work. Saccone “backpedaled into cultural issues, and it looked desperate,” Benson said.
But Saccone isn’t the only candidate who has tried the racial attacks strategy. Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie failed to mobilize GOP voters in Virginia last November, with campaign ads that tried to pick up on the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and gang violence. Democrat Ralph Northam’s win was in part attributable to a notable turnout of African-American voters.
[…]
But it’s not at all clear this can work in a general election. What animates a Republican base might only set up the party for failure against energized Democrats.
[…]
What we have seen is that the strategy to retreat to cultural wars — the rhetoric that was largely attributed to Trump’s political success — has only opened more doors for Democrats in down-ballot races.
[…]
READ THE FULL ARTICLE ONLINE HERE