House Dems move to yoke GOP to ‘QAnon’

"They can do QAnon, or they can do college-educated voters. They cannot do both."

House Democrats are preparing to center their strategy for the far-off midterm elections on a simple, aggressive message: Republicans are the party of QAnon.

Making an unusually early move to protect their narrow majority, House Democrats' campaign arm on Tuesday launched its first TV ad campaign, spotlighting supporters of the fringe conspiracy theory — including those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. It is the first step in a larger plan, orchestrated by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's new chairman, Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, to exploit the growing friction between Trump hardliners and establishment Republicans in the GOP base, which Maloney sees as a major weak point for the party.

"If Kevin McCarthy wants to take his party to ‘crazy town’ and follow these dangerous ideas, he shouldn't expect to do well in the next election,” Maloney told POLITICO in an interview previewing the party's strategy, referring to the House minority leader. “And it's important to the country that the Democratic Party continues to be the responsible adult.”

Maloney said the campaign message crystallized after the pro-Trump siege on Jan. 6, which was fueled, in part, by false Internet theories. “It was at the heart of the violent attack on the Capitol, but it had its roots going back years,” he said.

The new chairman has the uneviable task of shielding a razor-thin Democratic majority during a redistricting cycle and a midterm, when the president’s party typically loses seats. But he’s betting Democrats can mount a successful offensive using the kind of culture-war attacks that the GOP ruthlessly deployed against Democrats last cycle — including the barrage of “defund the police” ads that forced moderates to run away from their party’s far left.

The GOP’s waffling on QAnon has been on full display in recent days, as party leaders struggle to contain the fallout from the extremist rhetoric of freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). McCarthy has been largely silent as Democrats have moved to sanction her. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, took the highly unusual step of denouncing a House member, a move that Democrats say underscores the GOP’s split.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/02/qanon-gop-465157