The GOP's Congressional Leadership Fund targeted 21 Democrats today with attack ads based on their votes for Pelosi yesterday. Most of the attacks were against conservative Democrats. Only two progressives-- Katie Porter (CA) and Matt Cartwright (PA) were targets. This is the whole list, along with each member's 2020 win number:
Cheri Bustos (New Dem-IL)- 52.0%
Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY), new DCCC chair- 55.8%
Katie Porter (D-CA)- 53.5%
Matt Cartwright (D-PA)- 51.8%
Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)- 51.3%
Tom O’Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)- 51.6%
Chris Pappas (New Dem-NH)- 51.3%
Josh Harder (New Dem-CA)- 55.2%
Andy Kim (D-NJ)- 53.2%
Carolyn Bourdeaux (New Dem-GA)- 51.4%
Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)- 49.0%
Lauren Underwood (D-IL)- 50.7%
Sharice Davids (New Dem-KS)- 53.6%
Tom Malinowski (New Dem-NJ)- 50.6%
Antonio Delgado (D-NY)- 54.5%
Haley Stevens (New Dem-MI)- 50.2%
Lizzie Fletcher (New Dem-TX)- 50.8%
Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)- 51.9%
Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)- 50.9%
Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- 53.3%
Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)- 50.9%
The GOP isn't spending much on the campaign-- less than $100,000 and they're concentrating on tying each incumbent to Pelosi. Dan Conston, who heads up the SuperPAC for Kevin McCarthy shows the ugly and distorted tone the Republicans plan to take again this cycle: "Every lawmaker who supported Nancy Pelosi either by name or by cowardly hiding behind a vote of 'present' is directly responsible for enabling Pelosi and all of her dangerous agenda. Democrats will spend the next 24 months of their short-lived majority explaining why they sold out to Nancy Pelosi and the socialist left who want to defund our police departments, raise taxes and take away our freedoms."
Ted Lieu, co-chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, scoffed at the GOP attacks: "The Republicans keep going back to the same playbook: demonizing successful women Democrats. Whether they are attacking Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Representative Maxine Waters, Republicans seem obsessed with denigrating Democratic women leaders. In 2018 the GOP went after Speaker Pelosi in numerous misleading ads during the midterms and got their butts kicked. The same will happen in the 2022 midterms. The American people understand that Speaker Pelosi has been one of the most successful Speakers in U.S. history. If the Republicans actually had ideas that the majority of the people support, then they would discuss those ideas. But they don't. That's why all the GOP has left are vacuous, false attacks, particularly on Democratic women leaders." As long as Ted brought it up, let me just add that most people are unaware that 77,545,341 Americans voted for Democratic candidates for Congress in November and only 72,877,981 voted for Republicans. That's a big difference and Republicans only managed to do as well as they did because of extreme partisan and racist gerrymandering.
Meanwhile, their führer has signaled he plans to continue debasing cherished American institutions by awarding the Medal of Freedom to two neo-fascist allies in Congress, Devin Nunes (CA) and Gym Jordan (OH).
