With Polls and Private Meetings, Republicans Craft Blunt Messaging to Paint Democrats as Extreme.
'Republican leaders are sharpening and poll-testing lines of attack that portray Democratic policies on health care, the environment and abortion as far outside the norm, in hopes of arming President Trump with hyperbolic sound bites — some of them false — asserting that Democrats would cause long waits for doctors or make killing babies after birth legal.
The blunt messaging underscores one of the biggest challenges facing Democrats as they try to defeat the incumbent president: The need to define themselves and their ideas before Mr. Trump and his conservative allies do it for them.
The Republican National Committee has already begun polling in 16 states to assess ways to discredit ideas like “Medicare for all,” which Senator Bernie Sanders proposed in a bill this week, and build on the party’s broader argument that Democratic candidates like Mr. Sanders are promoting an extreme socialist agenda. Social conservative leaders have met with White House officials to discuss calling attention to Democratic-sponsored legislation to loosen restrictions on abortion in the second and third trimesters, like one that passed recently in New York.
The recent focus on health care and abortion follows well-coordinated attacks on policies like the Green New Deal, which reduced the far-reaching climate change proposal to a punch line with jokes about cow flatulence and putting farms out of business.
Some Democratic strategists said they have been taken aback recently by how successful Mr. Trump and Republicans have been at setting the terms of the debate around liberal policy ideas. And they are encouraging their party to be more nimble and deliver a more concise and accessible message.
In a fight with Mr. Trump, they say, nuance is not usually the Democrats’ best weapon.
“What our side has to understand is that to fight Trump it’s a battle for definition,” said Celinda Lake, a top Democratic pollster who has been working with left-of-center groups on a strategy to counter the messaging campaign from the right.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/politics/democrats-republicans-2020.html?
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