President Franklin D. Roosevelt once asked voters to “judge me by the enemies I have made.” That can be a pretty good standard of success. If a person is opposing bad people, then their dislike of him can be to his credit.
As a college student who is rather active in the conservative movement, I do a good bit of journalism and activism on campus. These efforts have not been without pushback from leftist opponents in the community. In fact, the people I am involved with accept the backlash as part of the job, and we endure it for the sake of the movement. Now, if I were to take an initiative at Michigan, and the College Democrats or, God forbid, the Young Democratic Socialists of America were to praise me for it, that might give me pause. I would be even more unsure of what I was doing if those groups were to spend more money than I did in pursuit of my goal.
Unfortunately, some in the Republican Party have not learned this lesson. In the 2022 cycle, Democrats have spent large amounts of money to prop up “Stop the Steal” Republican candidates who question the results of the 2020 elections. Their efforts could have two possible motivations: (1) to make the more mainstream candidates spend more in the primary so they will be weaker in the general or (2) to help the Trumpier candidates win the primary because they will be easier for Democrats to beat in the general.
In Pennsylvania, this strategy appears to have worked to perfection. Josh Shapiro, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, had his campaign spend twice as much money on TV ads for the very Trumpy Doug Mastriano than the Mastriano campaign itself did. As a result, Mastriano won in a crowded field of conventional Republicans.
California Republican congressman David Valadao, who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6 riot, faced a challenge from Chris Mathys, who calls himself a “Trump Conservative.” For the race, Nancy Pelosi had her super PAC run ads boasting of Mathys’s commitment to Trump. Results from that June 7 race are still being counted, but Valadao is currently leading Mathys with just over half the vote counted.
Democrats in Colorado are pursuing the same strategy, spending money to boost Ron Hanks, who began his campaign with a video of him blowing up a voting machine, in the state’s June 28 Senate primary. Other Republicans in the country are fearful of the same strategy in their races. Peter Meijer recently expressed concerns that Democrats would help his opponent, John Gibbs, closer to their August 2 primary in Michigan.
Whether the “Stop the Steal” candidates deplete the funds of the conventional Republicans or win the primary themselves, their presence in these races helps Democrats. These candidates should either leave the races for the good of the party and country or renounce the help they are getting from Pelosi and her ilk.
Otherwise, mainstream Republicans will have a golden opportunity to run ads against them in their races: “Doug Mastriano, Democrats’ favorite Pennsylvania candidate” or, “Chris Mathys, Pelosi’s pick for Congress.”
If future “Stop the Steal” candidates will not stop helping Democrats and withdraw from their races or make a serious effort to distance themselves from the support Pelosi gives them, these attacks will land, and they will land hard.