The new liberal playbook to keep House Republicans on defense

The new year could not start worse for House Republicans: 11 failed attempts to elect Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, infighting between the rank and file as fringe members of the party holding the rest of the room hostage, and the unified Democratic caucus. watch the Republicans tear themselves apart.

That’s exactly the narrative the coalition of Democrats and liberals wants to cement in the minds of American voters over the next two years. The group has come up with a new plan to undermine the Democratic Party and use Republican talking points and priorities against them. The effort involved an “investigate-the-investigators” approach: attacking the new House GOP leader as he launched an investigation into the Biden administration.

Describing itself as a war room collaborator for coordinating messaging, polling, paid and acquired media, rallies, and local organizations, the group includes the relaunched Congressional Integrity Project and a progressive activist campaign called Courage for America. Assisting with public opinion surveys are Navigators, a progressive research and polling group; Public Defense, a progressive veteran-focused organization; and a new rapid response and opposition research team called the House Accountability War Room, launched by Courage for America.

All of these organizations will focus on creating attack ads, social media messaging, local awareness campaigns, and the occasional stunt, which will represent some departure for Democrats in Congress if they undertake outside efforts. For most of the 2022 cycle, President Joe Biden and his more moderate congressional candidates have been less enthusiastic about attacking Republicans, instead choosing a bipartisan message that can be implemented, even as the progressive firebrand calls for another confrontation with the GOP right. That changed after the summer, and so on the tone is more combative may be here to stay.

The effort also aims to prevent a repeat of the Republican Party’s two-year Benghazi investigation, which damaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by revealing her use of private emails, accusing her of mishandling the State Department’s response to the terrorist attack, and by selectively leaking information from behind closed doors. – door testimony.

Democrats don’t just want to avoid another Benghazi investigation. He learned from that and borrowed some of the GOP’s messaging tactics with his social media campaign, researching the opposition distributed to reporters, and surveying funders, subordinates, and supporters. The hope is that the liberal group will balance the tanks, activists, and conservative organizations that have prepared the Republicans to use their power in the majority for the examination.

How progressive groups plan to control the narrative

Although these groups are not all operating under the same umbrella organization, they share the same goal: setting the narrative of how the GOP House will act before it has the power to initiate investigations, push conservative agendas, and create new rules for Congress. .

“One of our main goals here is to help educate the American people about how this House is run and controlled by MAGA extremists, which is becoming increasingly clear as we witness this speaker’s battle,” said Zac Petkanas, a longtime Democratic strategist. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Harry Reid’s senate campaign and run the House Accountability War Room, told me.

Petkanas said the group’s goal is to “make sure that none of the work done by this new House goes unnoticed.” The idea is to hold up a mirror to Republican priorities. “So when they pass legislation,” he said, “doing what they’re going to do, which is to cut Social Security and Medicare, raise prescription drug costs, pass a national abortion ban, we’re going to make sure people don’t just lash out here in DC.” so that the people at home do not hear about it, we will hold a lantern for it.

The group was prepared in the fall of 2022, after it became clear that even if the Democratic candidate rejected the possibility in the district and state, he would lose the majority of the House by the thinnest of margins.

For example, Public Defense, which usually focuses on veterans-specific policy advocacy, is partnering with Courage for America, a network of progressive activists, to “start preparing as soon as the election is over in November on what will be this Republican show. , “Naveed Shah, political director for Public Defense and senior counsel for Courage for America, told me. “Public Defense and Courage for America are working to ensure that our elected officials hear from their constituents, and they need to know that they will be held accountable with us.”

That includes a press conference, like the one the two groups delivered Thursday in front of the Capitol building to call on the GOP to condemn the two years of political violence that followed the January 6 Capitol attack. There were four Democratic members of Congress, former Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone, and about 40 military veterans. And it includes directly confronting members of the Republican Congress through local demonstrations in their districts (such as in Long Island, New York, to demand an investigation of George Santos elected Representative) or on the Hill and filming the interaction for social media, like this week’s meeting with Reps. .-choose Troy Nehls from Texas, Mike Carey and Bill Johnson of Ohio, and Fanone send petition for Georgia Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene’s office.

The confrontation shows the differing attitudes of these outside groups in dealing with the GOP; compared to the official Democratic Party groups, this new organization is more daring to keep the Republicans on Capitol Hill and to damage the reputation of the future investigators and power brokers.

This week, the House Accountability War Room also released the first opposition research document focusing on 39 current and incoming GOP lawmakers. Highlighting figures like Greene, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the “MAGA Handbook” was distributed around congressional offices, Metro stations, and around Capitol Hill.

Improving the handbook and efforts to link the House Republican majority to the far right is the modified Congressional Integrity Project, which put up posters and displays near the Capitol to exploit the GOP’s chaotic speaker election, highlighting McCarthy’s efforts to gain favor. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the House Freedom Caucus have so far blocked McCarthy’s bid.

In addition, the Congressional Integrity Project plans to “participate in other paid activities. We are looking at putting people in key swing districts around the country because we want to have a discussion with the constituents of the Republican members in the swing districts to ask, ‘Is this what Congress wants to focus on in?’” Brad Woodhouse, a veteran Democratic strategist who helped lead the project, said.

That offensive stance will be a new strategy for Democrats, especially in the context of the congressional investigation that Republicans will face in the Biden administration, Woodhouse said. “Someone can see the effort to push the investigation against President Biden and his administration and Democrats and democratic policies, will be defensive,” he said, “but we don’t see it that way. We are on offense.” He added that the aim was to “undermine the political status. We will make them pay the price.

And that means creating a coordinated anti-MAGA Republican narrative in the press and social media, informing partners in the White House and in both chambers of Congress about polling and opposition research, and taking that knowledge to voters, with the same zeal as Republicans. the last time they had a House majority with a Democratic president (like the Benghazi hearing) and have begun to prepare with outside groups at the end of last year.

“I take a lot of optimism from how united this message by the Democrats and the president put front and center the ideology of MAGA, making the Republicans responsible for it,” Woodhouse said. “And it’s not a difficult concept.”