THE GOP IS CLUELESS

David Kurtz at TPM has a good rundown of what to expect from the MAGAGOP as they start to deal with their new opponent in the 2024 campaign:

“The initial round of GOP attacks on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris have so far been scattershot, inconsistent, self-contradictory, and often comical. But we’ve seen it all before, and we know how this works.

“The volume and intensity of the attacks – deeply suffused with misogyny and racism – represent 1,000 trial balloons. Some will pop on their own and others will get shot down immediately, but eventually a few will get through the blitz of counterattacks. Those few will offer a clue as to what “works,” and they’ll form the basis for additional rounds of attacks playing off of the same theme or underlying premise, however false it may be.

“Repeated often enough, the attacks will slowly accrete into a “thing” that unsophisticated editors and reporters notice. They start asking questions about it. Their questions may seem benign and the early round of stories often tepid (I promise you that before the week is out a reporter is going to grab ahold of the attacks on Harris as a “DEI hire” and use them as a peg to write more generally about DEI), but gradually the “thing” becomes a narrative.”

In the hours after Biden announced that he would withdraw, Republicans from Trump on down flailed for a response. Some Republicans expressed anger, while others were visibly baffled by how to react to the shift. Many reacted by suggesting that the shift from Biden to Harris itself was illegitimate, calling the President’s withdrawal from the race a “coup” and proclaiming that they’re actually running against a system, not a candidate.

Jason Miller, who has helped helm Trump’s PR apparatus since 2016, announced on NBC on Sunday that he had identified a core Harris vulnerability: “She wants to ban plastic straws.”

Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and longtime friend of Trump, appeared to take the cue. In his Sunday evening broadcast, Hannity reminded his audience that Harris had committed to banning the straws, before proclaiming: “I love my plastic straws. I hate paper straws.”

He used that as part of a broader effort during his hour to depict Harris as a far-left radical, as hell-bent on banning the plastic straws cherished by all freedom-loving Americans as she is on joining with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to enslave Americans in “socialized” health care. Harris, Hannity said, co-sponsored Sanders’ Medicare-for-All bill.

Stephen Miller sputtered to Laura Ingraham Sunday night about the unfairness of it all.

“They held a primary!” Miller nearly shouted. “People – they had ballots! They filled out circles that went to the voting booths! They spent money on advertisements, and as President Trump said, the Republican Party spent tens of millions of dollars running against Joe Biden.”

He added: “Now they’ve just woke up one morning and said: ‘Never mind, we’re canceling the entire primary, we’re getting rid of our candidate, and we’re pretending the election has never even happened and we’re gonna let donors handpick a new nominee.'”

The climax of Miller’s outburst here was predictable: He said that having to face off against a new candidate was “as full-frontal an attack on American democracy as we’ve ever seen in the history of America’s major political parties.”

House Republicans just got the rug pulled out from under them. They’re so used to running against President Joe Biden and seem to be struggling mightily with how to run against Vice President Kamala Harris, a 59-year-old woman of Black and Indian heritage who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee. So naturally they went for the race card. Because of course they would.

Kellyanne Conway, another longtime Trump communications adviser, plowed that particular frontier by identifying her own, non-straw and non-Democracy vulnerabilities: Harris, Conway said on Fox News, “is lazy and inarticulate.” “She does not speak well,” Conway said. “She does not work hard.”

Multiple outlets reported that Republican leadership has implored the conference to quit attacking Harris in racist and gendered ways, encapsulated by the shorthand of calling her a “DEI hire.”

Republican lawmakers aren’t listening.

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) today: “Intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel,” she said, adding: “I think she was a DEI hire. And I think that that’s what we’re seeing, and I just don’t think that they have anybody else.”

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) called Harris a “DEI hire,” a shocking remark that Democrats pushed back hard on.

Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), one of just four Black House Republicans, then said that Harris is “the greatest example of DEI.” He went on to say, “For those who believe in DEI, this is exactly what DEI is like. Kamala Harris.”

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) said on Sunday that Democrats “have to stick with her because of her ethnic background.” We followed up with Grothman on this, who then informed us “I don’t think people view her as Black.”

MAGA internet personality Stew Peters posted on Xitter (that’s pronounced “shitter”): “The leading Democratic presidential candidate’s mother was named Shyamala Gopalan. This alone should be enough for disqualification.”

This kind of racist rhetoric is likely to spread as one of, if not the main line of attack against Harris coming from MAGA world.

Grothman added that people “just view her as someone who did nothing on the border.”

The NRCC, the House GOP’s campaign arm, sent talking points to their members in competitive races warning of the challenges of trying to define a presidential candidate in roughly 100 days. This will be critical for not only the presidential race but also down-ballot contests.

“Republicans have never had less time to define the presidential nominee of our opponents,” the memo said, according to a copy obtained by Punchbowl News. “Because of that, it is vital that our entire Conference is on message and working together to present Kamala Harris as an extreme San Francisco progressive who is out of step with the American people.”

Megyn Kelly (R-Broken Brain) and Laura “Saw” Loomer are falsely calling Harris a whore and an escort who “slept her way to the top.” The execrable Loomer - who had a prominent serat in front of Trujmp at his RNC acceptance speech - went on to claim that the reason Harris had no children of her own was because “she has had so many abortions she damaged her uterus.”

Trump is so afraid of her that he’s still ranting against Biden, even after Biden dropped out of the race. He claimed, without evidence, that Biden didn’t really have COVID-19.

Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Youngman over at Today’s Big Stuff have come up with the GOP Stages of Grief upon learning they’re about to lose to a badass Black woman:

Stage One — Denial and all-caps Truth Social posts that reek of fear and wall ketchup

Stage Two — Anger but remembering to say DEI instead of the n-word

Stage Three — Bargaining… with Putin, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Elon Musk and every other degenerate scumbag who also hates women and minorities

Stage Four — Depression with lots and lots and lots of sobbing and whining and getting closer to saying the n-word

Stage Five — Acceptance which probably ain’t happening for the crowd that’s still pissed over losing the 2020 Election and the Civil War.

And of course you can’t end a report like this without quoting Rick Wilson on what’s going on in TrumpWorld: “He’s rage-Truthing like a methed-up tweaker after a successful run stealing catalytic converters.”

J.D. Vance has taken to attacking Harris as a “lonely cat lady.” America’s 38 million cat owners may have something to say about that. Being that in my neighborhood, I am the Crazy Cat Lady, it’s another reason to consider how nice it would be to punch that pudgy little chinless inbred DNA failure in his little moon face.

And now news just broke that Elon Musk has changed his mind about pledging $45 million a month to Donald’s campaign because, he says, he doesn’t “subscribe to a cult of personality.” Considering he made the pledge only a week ago, it’s much more likely he just doesn’t feel like setting that much money on fire in service to a losing candidate.

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