In the 116th Congress, if you’re a Democrat, you’re either a socialist, a baby killer or an anti-Semite.
That, at least, is what Republicans want voters to think, as they seek to demonize Democrats well in advance of the 2020 elections by painting them as left-wing crazies who will destroy the American economy, murder newborn babies and turn a blind eye to bigotry against Jews.
The unusually aggressive assault, which Republican officials and strategists outlined in interviews last week, is meant to strangle the new Democratic majority in its infancy. It was set in motion this month by President Trump, who used his State of the Union address to rail against “new calls to adopt socialism in our country” and mischaracterize legislation backed by Democrats in New York and Virginia as allowing “a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.”
Then last week, Republicans amped it up, seizing on a Twitter post by a freshman representative, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, which even some Democrats condemned as anti-Semitic, and ridiculing the “Green New Deal,” an ambitious economic stimulus plan unveiled by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described democratic socialist. Suddenly even Jewish Democrats were abetting anti-Semitism and moderate Democrats in Republican districts were Trotskyites and Stalinists.
“Socialism is the greatest vulnerability by far that the House Democrats have,” Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in an interview, adding that he had also instructed his team to spotlight “all the extreme wild ideas” that Democrats espouse, “on a daily basis, on an hourly basis if it’s available.”
House Republicans have identified 55 Democrats they regard as vulnerable, including many freshmen. Some flipped Republican seats last year, some represent districts carried by Mr. Trump in 2016, and some are in districts held by Republicans until recently. Bruised by their losses last year, Republicans are determined to start earlier and be more aggressive on the offense in 2020, and are hoping to exploit the Democratic presidential candidates’ courtship of the left.
An advertising offensive is already underway. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a political action committee affiliated with House Republican leaders, began running digital ads last week that link two freshmen who flipped Republican districts, Representatives Colin Allred of Texas and Antonio Delgado of New York, to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her “radical Green New Deal assault on the American economy.”
The spots are the first in what will be a national campaign, according to Zach Hunter, a spokesman for the fund. The stark ads, featuring stern-looking images of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, offer a preview of how Republicans intend to vilify her in much the same way they have vilified Speaker Nancy Pelosi, caricaturing her as a radical from San Francisco.
Democrats see an insidious effort to use women and minorities, especially women of color, as the new symbols of the radical “other.” And they are calling out Republicans as hypocrites, noting that Mr. Trump and other Republicans trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes and racist dog whistles long before anyone noticed Ms. Omar’s Twitter feed.
“I guess they used that argument to its end, and so they have to find someone new,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in a brief interview. “And who else to use except folks like myself and other freshmen congresswomen? We’re least like them in every way possible, so I think it’s a potent symbol.”
But Republicans like Mr. Emmer say they are simply repeating Democrats’ own words, and they have been aided by Democratic stumbles. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s team published an early draft of the Green New Deal — which has been backed by several top-tier Democratic presidential candidates — that contained phrases those candidates did not endorse, including a call for economic security for “all who are unable or unwilling to work.” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez deleted the draft from her website, but Republicans took it and ran.
Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, called the plan — endorsed by 70 Democrats in the House and about a dozen in the Senate — “a fantasy” and insisted the erroneous draft be placed in the Congressional Record. Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator, called it “a form of insanity.” The Republican National Committee issued a briefing paper headlined “The Democrats’ Burgeoning Love Affair With Socialism.”
In the Senate, where five Democrats are already running for president, Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, announced he would force a vote on the measure, drawing howls from Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, who slammed the move as a “cynical stunt” intended solely to put Democrats, including the presidential candidates, on the spot. A vote in favor of the Green New Deal could help them court progressives in the primary vote, but hurt in a general election.
“Democrats have handed Republicans this messaging on a silver platter,” said Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist and former Trump White House official, adding that he believed socialism and Democrats’ stance on abortion were more powerful lines of attack than anti-Semitism. “All these controversies dovetail perfectly with the president’s messaging at the State of the Union.”
Democrats dismissed the messaging as par for the course.
“We are not going to abandon socialist policies like Social Security — or is that ‘socialist security,’ is that what they call it?” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said wryly. “The bottom line is the president is in campaign mode — maybe he’s always in campaign mode — and I just expect a lot of this to be thrown over the transom.”
Democrats say they intend to counter the offensive by talking about the issues they ran and won on: reducing health care costs and prescription drug prices, passing an infrastructure package and rooting out corruption in Washington.
“We have an agenda to help families, and we have ideas,” said Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who is among those being targeted. “Washington Republicans are set back now, and all they’re playing on is exaggerations and fear.”
But Democrats must be careful not to let those exaggerations take hold. They are well aware that their path to keeping the majority runs through districts like Ms. Bustos’s, which the president carried in 2016.
“Of course I can see them trying to drive a wedge between the people in our districts, the people who are in more moderate districts,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, a centrist Democrat from New Jersey and a chairman of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. “That’s why it’s really important that we make sure that we govern from the middle.”
The hardball tactics have been especially evident in the Republican response to Ms. Omar’s tweet last week, and to the legislation adopted in New York, and proposed in Virginia, to loosen restrictions on abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy under certain conditions.
Before he became embroiled in a controversy over blackface, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, a Democrat, gave Republicans an opening last month when he said during a radio interview about the bill that “a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother” in the case of an infant born with severe deformities.
Mr. Northam’s office later said he was discussing medical treatment, not abortion, but Republicans, including Mr. Trump, accused him of promoting infanticide. House Republican leaders began gathering signatures to force a vote on legislation requiring doctors to provide care “when a child is born alive following an abortion or attempted abortion.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee, meanwhile, began filling reporters’ inboxes with attacks targeted at centrist freshmen, with subject lines like “So we’re murdering newborns now?” and “Abortion extremists come to New Mexico,” referring to Representative Xochitl Torres Small.
The committee has spent weeks lobbing charges of anti-Semitism at Ms. Omar and another freshman Democrat, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, both fierce critics of Israel. But after Democratic leaders forced Ms. Omar to apologize for insinuating on Twitter that American policy toward Israel was fueled by money, the committee expanded its campaign, suggesting that other Democrats — including Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia, who is Jewish — were somehow abetting an anti-Semite.
Ms. Luria, a freshman and Navy veteran, led the effort to push the Democratic leadership to speak out about Ms. Omar’s tweet. Yet under an email with the subject line “Be a leader, Elaine,” the committee pressed Ms. Luria to demand Ms. Omar’s removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee “instead of letting the anti-Semite spew hate without any repercussions.”
Ms. Luria and her team were incensed. “Congresswoman Luria served for 20 years in the United States Navy, and, as a Jewish woman in America, she will not be lectured by Washington Republicans about anti-Semitism,” Ms. Luria’s chief of staff, Kathryn Sorenson, said in an email.
Mr. Emmer defended the statement, saying the committee was not “going after” Ms. Luria but rather “criticizing her and some others for not calling for their colleagues’ removal from the Foreign Affairs Committee.” He said Democrats could expect more of the same in 2020, adding, “This is all about compare and contrast.”
