Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

With Name-Calling and Twitter Battles, House Republican Campaign Arm Copies Trump’s Playbook

Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, has stood firm behind the campaign arm’s strategy.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is portrayed as wearing clown makeup. Democratic congressional candidates — including an Air Force combat veteran — are labeled “socialist losers” or anti-Semites. Others have been singled out as Lyin’ Lucy McBath, Fake Nurse Lauren Underwood, Little Max Rose and China Dan McCready.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, with the blessing of House Republican leaders, has adopted a no-holds-barred strategy to win back the House majority next year, borrowing heavily from President Trump’s playbook in deploying such taunts and name-calling. After losing 40 seats and the House majority in November, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the committee’s new chairman, and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, decided that their messaging needed to be ruthless.

The offensive hinges largely on the relatively facile notion that by tagging all House Democrats as socialists, anti-Semites or far-left extremists, Republicans will be able to alienate swing-state voters. On Tuesday night, after the House voted to condemn as racist President Trump’s attacks on four congresswoman, the campaign arm’s communications team deluged reporters’ inboxes with message after message calling vulnerable Democratic lawmakers “deranged.”

Their tactics have discomforted some Republicans and highlighted the struggle in the party over how much to lean into the tenor of politics forged by their leader.

“To devolve into childish name-calling usually doesn’t win the argument. I think we can do better,” said Tom Rooney, a former five-term Republican representative from Florida. “Maybe this is what the donors to the N.R.C.C. want to hear nowadays. Maybe name-calling raises money, and that’s what we’ve become.”

For the communications arm of the committee, that has translated into circulating photographs depicting Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as a clown and barraging reporters with statements reminding them of the nicknames with which they refer to Democratic lawmakers and candidates. Some are just referred to as “socialist losers”; others have been given their own bespoke tags.

Ms. Underwood, Democrat of Illinois, is “Fake Nurse Lauren.” (Ms. Underwood, who earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Michigan and worked as a research nurse, never worked specifically with patients.) Representative Collin C. Peterson, Democrat of Minnesota, is “Cranky Collin.”

Ms. McBath, who represents Georgia’s Sixth District, has become a particular target for the committee. During the campaign, she said she briefly moved to Tennessee to help her husband work through family issues, then switched her residency back to Georgia. Claiming that she is not a resident of Georgia, the committee sent a gift basket to the Tennessee home of her husband. Fox News, obtaining a copy of the signature, wrote an article featuring a comment from the House Republican campaign arm that reiterated that Ms. McBath is a resident of Tennessee. But a close look at the signature showed that her mother-in-law — “M McBath” — signed for the package — a fact mocked by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Committee officials show no sign of tempering their attacks.

“We make no apologies for aggressively calling out the anti-Semitic racists in the socialist Democratic Party totally consumed by their hatred of President Trump and America,” Chris Pack, the communications director of the campaign arm, said in a statement.

Mr. McCarthy, too, stood firm behind the strategy. He praised Mr. Emmer’s “strong tactical sense and impressive work ethic” in a statement.

“As a conference, we are united behind his vision to campaign on offense — and expand the map by outworking, out-recruiting and exposing the corrupt, inept new Democrat Socialist Party,” Mr. McCarthy said.

Republican campaign operatives backing the strategy argued that aggressive tactics were necessary to rouse the interests of sleepy and shrunken local press corps. Adopting the mantra that “all news is good news,” the committee appears to believe that even if reporters choose instead to write about its bare-knuckled tactics, they are at least reiterating the nicknames and points that House Republicans hope will reach voters.

“If that’s what it takes to get a story,” said Mike Shields, who joined the National Republican Congressional Committee as director of its independent expenditure program in 2009 and helped Republicans win a 63-seat gain. “There needs to be a shift in mind-set to be in the majority. It’s better than getting no coverage at all.”

But the unrestrained use of nicknames also has provoked public outcry. After the committee issued a statement in early June mocking the stature of Mr. Rose, a moderate Democrat from New York, who stands at 5 feet 6 inches, even some Republicans came to his defense.

“Instead of working on bipartisan issues, Little Max Rose is content passing socialist bills” for “giggles,” Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the committee, wrote in an official release that used an epithet before giggles. “Playtime is over, Max.”

Members already displeased with what they felt were needlessly aggressive personal attacks felt the committee had crossed a line by taunting a veteran: Mr. Rose served in the Army for almost five years and was wounded in Afghanistan, earning a Purple Heart. Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin, called it a “stupid tactic and a counterproductive tag.”

“I hope the lesson the N.R.C.C. draws from that is to not do it again,” Mr. Gallagher said.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and another veteran, told Politico: “The president’s got his own unique style. I don’t think we need to mimic it.”

When Mr. Rooney saw the statement on Twitter, reposted by a Fox News reporter, he publicly expressed his disappointment with Mr. Emmer, calling out the committee chairman and commenting, “This isn’t you.” Mr. Pack, the chief spokesman for the committee, chimed in, “No, that’s Max Rose.”

Mr. Rooney shot back: “That’s not what I’m referring to. Maybe there’s a better conservative argument to counter his support of this legislation than calling him ‘little.’ At least that would be my advice to my 13-year-old.”

The exchange is only one of the Twitter scrapes that has spilled into public view. While committee messaging is, by nature, meant to attract the attention of the news media — especially among local outlets in battleground districts — party insiders have worried they have not attracted the right kind of attention.

When Jill Burcum, an editorial writer for The Minneapolis Star Tribune and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, took issue with the committee’s depiction of Mr. Schiff as a clown, Mr. Pack responded on Twitter. Using the same motley photo, he reiterated that Mr. Schiff was a “socialist clown” and added, "Don’t let your apparent bias blind you from that fact.”

When the committee called a little-known Air Force combat veteran who is running for Ohio’s First Congressional District a “socialist loser,” it struck a nerve: A columnist for The Cincinnati Enquirer panned the attack on the veteran, Nikki Foster, who flew missions over Iraq and Afghanistan, as “G.O.P. desperation.”

“In doing so, the congressional Republicans’ fund-raising arm brought attention to a candidate no one knew about. Why even go there?” the columnist, Jason Williams, wrote.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Taunts and Twitter Feuds: Trying Familiar Playbook to Reclaim the House. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT