Dems propping up bad republican candidates actually worked
Kevin Robillard 🇺🇸 @RobillardAnd with this race call, every single Republican who won their primary with help from Democratic meddling has lost in the general election.
AP Politics @AP_Politics
BREAKING: Democrat Hillary Scholten wins election to U.S. House in Michigan's 3rd Congressional District. #APracecall at 1:55 a.m. EST.
Throughout the late spring and into the summer, Democratic operatives made a series of risky choices to elevate Republican candidates who wholeheartedly embraced former President Donald Trump’s cornucopia of lies about the 2020 presidential election.
In Republican primary after Republican primary, Democrats aired ads serving two purposes: promoting seemingly unelectable candidates to the GOP base while attacking them for a general election audience. The ads noted how close the Republican candidates were to Trump, played up their support for strict restrictions or bans on abortion and other things the GOP base loved but general election voters hated.
On election night, those risky bets paid off. All six of the election-denying candidates on the ballot whom Democrats boosted ― three gubernatorial candidates, two House candidates and a Senate candidate ― lost, most of them resoundingly.
read: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-elevation-of-election-deniers-worked_n_636b5108e4b04925c8929fcf
= new reply since forum marked as read
It is not as if Democrats ran ads saying "support this candidate" regarding the election deniers.
They ran advertising stating "X candidate is too extreme for Michigan!" These were ATTACK ads against them-- general election type attack ads, but prior to the primary election.
So hey, Republican primary voters did not take our good advice-- that was their choice, wasn't it? They fell victim to "reverse psychology", either because they WANTED the most extreme candidate, or because they have trained themselves to do the opposite of whatever Democrats say-- it matters little which.
But Democrats never "promoted" the extreme Republican candidates, at least in Michigan. They actually attacked them.
It was a clever employment of "reverse psychology", and served the further purpose of softening up these candidates for the general election-- as most of the people viewing the ads would be future general election voters rather than Republican primary voters.
If Republican primary voters were foolish enough to fall for the reverse psychology just to "own the libs"-- or because they wanted the most extreme candidate-- that's their problem. "Politics ain't beanbag", and Democrats are entitled to spend their campaign cash in any legal manner which they wish to do.
But the most important point here, is that this advertising did not "promote the extremist GOP candidate"--- it attacked them, which is clearly what Democratic advertising would be expected to do. There was no "false flag" here...
The mainstream media seems to have lined up against this effort because it was rather "clever", and Democrats aren't allowed to campaign in any way that would be considered "clever" or approach a "dirty trick"-- (even though Republicans have been far-and-away the party of "dirty tricks" for the past century).
but there were no dirty tricks here-- (at least in the Michigan campaign)-- the extremist election-denying candidate was labeled as what they were-- "too extreme for Michigan!" They may have run the same ads in the general election, and there was no change in the party's position on that candidate.
So if Democrats were able to manipulate Republican primary results by telling the truth--
that is too bad, but Trumptard voters are not too bright...
