The GOP wants to focus on Kamala Harris’s record, not her ethnicity or gender – but who will tell Trump?
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Republican leaders urge party to avoid racist and sexist attacks against Harris
The GOP wants to focus on Kamala Harris’s record, not her ethnicity or gender – but who will tell Trump?
Associated Press
Wed 24 Jul 2024 13.10 BST
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Republican leaders are warning party members against using overtly racist and sexist attacks against
Kamala Harris, as they and Donald Trump’s campaign scramble to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic rival less than four months before election day.
At a closed-door meeting of House
Republicans on Tuesday, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Richard Hudson, urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies.
“This election will be about policies and not personalities,” the House speaker,
Mike Johnson, told reporters after the meeting.
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“This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” he added, “and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”
The warnings point to the new risks for Republicans in running against a Democrat who would become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of south Asian decent to win the White House. Trump, in particular, has a history of racist and misogynistic attacks that could turn off key groups of swing voters, including suburban women, as well as voters of color and younger people whom Trump’s campaign has been courting.
The admonitions came after some members and Trump allies began to cast Harris, a former district attorney, attorney general and senator, as a “DEI” hire – a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“Intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel,” the Wyoming representative Harriet Hageman said
in a TV interview. “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.”
Since Biden announced he was exiting the campaign, Republicans
have rolled out a long list of attack lines against Harris, including trying to tie her to the most unpopular Biden policies and his handling of the economy and the southern border. Trump campaign officials and other Republicans have accused Harris of being complicit in a cover-up of Biden’s health issues, and they have been mining her record as a prosecutor in California as they try to paint her as soft on crime.
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Johnson said both Trump and Harris have records in White House policy and said voters can compare how families were doing under the Trump administration with how they are doing now under Biden.
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“She is the co-owner, co-author, co-conspirator in all the policies that got us into the mess,” Johnson said.
Biden announced on Sunday that he was withdrawing from the race. In a memo on the state of the race on Tuesday, the Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio argued that the fundamentals of the campaign had not changed now that Harris appears increasingly likely to be the Democratic nominee.
“The Democrats deposing one nominee for another does NOT change voters discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, the open border, housing costs not to mention concern over two foreign wars,” he wrote. “As importantly, voters will also learn about Harris’s dangerously liberal record before becoming Biden’s partner.”