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Trump and Republicans settle on fear — and falsehoods — as a midterm strategy
The GOP certainly can't run on healthcare which they tried their best to destroy, nor on the tax cuts for the wealthy which is ballooning the deficit, nor turning the EPA into a deregulation machine for polluting corporations, nor Trumps misogynist personality or his love for Putin. They haven't accomplished much at all for the vast majority of Americans.
So the GOP peddles fear, bigotry, xenophobia, religious gobbledygook, and as many outright lies as they can cram into the final two weeks of electioneering.
They've borrowed their divisive midterm strategy from the omnipresent Russian meddlers.
10/22/18
President Trump has settled on a strategy of fear — laced with falsehoods and racially tinged rhetoric — to help lift his party to victory in the coming midterms, part of a broader effort to energize Republican voters with two weeks left until the Nov. 6 elections. Trump’s messaging — on display in his regular campaign rallies, tweets and press statements — largely avoids much talk of his achievements and instead offers an apocalyptic vision of the country, which he warns will only get worse if Democrats retake control of Congress. The president has been especially focused in recent days on a caravan of about 5,000 migrants traveling north to cross the U.S. border, a group he has darkly characterized as gang members, violent criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners” — a claim for which his administration has so far provided no concrete evidence. “You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Eastern, you’re going to find everything. And guess what? We’re not allowing them in our country,” Trump said, when asked by reporters Wednesday if he had any proof of terrorists infiltrating the caravan. “We want safety.”
The overall strategy, Trump advisers and political operatives said, is to paint a portrait of a chaotic, dangerous world — with Trump and Republicans as the panacea. Many of the president’s assertions are false or clear distortions of the facts. Trump is incorrect, for example, in his claim that Democrats will “destroy” both Medicare and Social Security, while he has made both programs “stronger.” There is also no evidence that Democrats are paying for the migrant caravan snaking its way north toward the southern border, while voter fraud remains exceedingly rare. But that has not stopped the president from repeating such false or misleading claims, in part because advisers say his key midterm strategy is to fuel Republican turnout by riling up his most avid supporters, often through frightening and emotional appeals. “This is the way propaganda works,” Ben-Ghiat said. “You put different enemies together that really have nothing to do with one another. He’s trying to create this image of a wave of people of color, or threats, who are coming to invade the border.”
The GOP certainly can't run on healthcare which they tried their best to destroy, nor on the tax cuts for the wealthy which is ballooning the deficit, nor turning the EPA into a deregulation machine for polluting corporations, nor Trumps misogynist personality or his love for Putin. They haven't accomplished much at all for the vast majority of Americans.
So the GOP peddles fear, bigotry, xenophobia, religious gobbledygook, and as many outright lies as they can cram into the final two weeks of electioneering.
They've borrowed their divisive midterm strategy from the omnipresent Russian meddlers.