That’s the big takeaway from a newly-released strategy document from the largest Super PAC backing Republican House candidates.
The Congressional Leadership Fund spent $140 million in the 2020 cycle, and could very well spend even more in 2022. It will hold enormous sway over what candidates are recruited in next year’s House races, and what their message is.
Republicans substantially outperformed expectations in 2020’s House elections. While more forecasters predicted Democrats would gain a dozen seats or more, they instead lost 13 and emerged with one of the narrowest House majorities ever. There were many reasons for those gains. President Trump drove a dramatic surge in Republican turnout, but it was more than that. Millions of voters saw Democrats push an agenda of mass rioting and cultural arson and were understandably repulsed. Many voted for Republican House members even when they didn’t vote for Trump himself.
But according to CLF head Dan Conston in a newly-released memo, the victory came down to one thing: Putting a new, more “diverse” gloss on the tired pre-2016 Republican Party.
In 2020, all 15 of the seats Republicans flipped were won by a woman, a minority, or a veteran. They were candidates of character, heroism, and achievement. That’s not by accident. Leader McCarthy made it a priority from the outset to find strong candidates with compelling life stories that reflect their districts. [CLF]
In other words, the secret to GOP success going forward is to completely buy into the globalist left’s toxic ideology reducing people to identity checklists. And of course, when making that checklist, being a woman is better than being a man, and being “of color” is superior to being white.
This is toxic and suicidal. It submits entirely to the left’s moral framing, which is both wrong and something the left will always be better at. And, of course, routinely results in the election and promotion of subpar candidates. Consider Congressman Dan Crenshaw. Crenshaw supports foreign policy interventionism (including the quixotic, objectiveless mission in Syria) and “red flag” laws to roll back gun rights. Crenshaw called Donald Trump’s immigration positions racist until he became the president, and in 2020 he joined in the mob calling George Floyd’s fentanyl overdose a murder requiring nationwide police reform. Crenshaw is at best a shaky, uncertain political ally. His ideal Republican Party is George W. Bush’s, but pro-gay marriage. Yet because he is a veteran with an eyepatch, he is touted as a Republican all-star.
Candidates like Crenshaw are political junk food. They get attention. They raise money. They can certainly win elections. But just like eating too many Snickers bars will make you fat, nominating politicians based on backstory while ignoring policy is a recipe for long-term failure. It’s the strategy that causes Republicans to win Congressional majorities, then pass nothing of substance except tax cuts before being crushed by Democrats two years later.
The way forward for the Republican Party is to nominate good candidates, regardless of background, who understand and back President Trump’s fundamental realignment of the American political order.
