Democrats are running ads for a Trump-endorsed candidate in Michigan’s third congressional district, continuing their effort to aid those who claim the 2020 election was stolen.
John Gibbs, who is running to unseat Peter Meijer, one of ten Republican Congress members who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, gained support Tuesday from an unlikely source, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“John Gibbs is too conservative for west Michigan,” the voiceover in the ad says. It warns that Gibbs will support policies similar to those of Trump, including being “hard-line against immigrants at the border” and “supporting ‘patriotic education.’”
Although the ad is critical of Gibbs, it could serve to help him gain favor with the Republican base that will choose between him and Meijer in the state’s August 2 primary. Conservative voters will be more likely to gravitate toward the candidate that leftists see as “too conservative.”
The ad is part of a larger campaign by Democrats to help “stop the steal” Republicans, whom they believe to be easier to beat in the general election. If their favored Trump-like candidate does not win in the primary, they can still force the mainstream candidate to spend more money, weakening him in the general.
“The DCCC boosting John Gibbs is clear evidence of who Nancy Pelosi prefers in this race,” Meijer spokeswoman Emily Taylor told National Review in an email. “Democrats don’t want to face Peter Meijer in the November election because Peter is the best candidate to represent West Michigan in Congress, and he’s the only candidate who will put the interests of the Third District ahead of partisan priorities.”
“We are confident that voters will see through Democrats’ political games while Peter remains focused on the issues that matter most to the people he represents,” she continued.
The Gibbs campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
In an interview with NR back in June, Meijer appeared lucid with regard to Democratic meddling in GOP primaries. He cited the fact that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s political action committee ran similar ads for David Valadao in California, who also voted for Trump’s impeachment.
He predicted that Democrats would “wait until the last minute, until it’s too late to counter” to interfere in his own election. As it happened, he was correct, as his primary against Gibbs is only a week away.
“I will say,” he added in that interview, “there’s something pretty rich about Nancy Pelosi one day saying January 6 is the greatest threat to our democracy and must be investigated, and, at the exact same time, she’s greenlighting her super PAC to criticize Republicans who voted for impeachment and elevate their extreme primary challengers.”
In the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race, Democrats spent more money on TV ads for Doug Mastriano, a stop-the-steal candidate in the Republican primary, than the Mastriano campaign itself, helping Mastriano win. Later, in Colorado, Democrats in the state undertook a similar effort to help stop-the-steal candidate Ron Hanks against the more moderate Joe O’Dea, though they did not succeed.
Democrats need to reckon with their inconsistency on the issue of 2020 election deniers. Taking Democrats’ public words and actions together, the American people can conclude that the party believes stop-the-steal Republicans are so dangerous that they deserve electoral help.
With these efforts, they have abdicated any moral legitimacy in the condemnation of Trump’s stolen-election lie.