2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Polls, both recent and in the past several months, show that the majority of Americans prefer [View all]CajunBlazer
(5,648 posts)If they wanted to face Clinton instead of Sanders they would be attacking Sanders instead of Clinton.
They also would be trying to attack Clinton using Sanders' talking points:
Strange Bedfellows - Republican Operatives Try to Help Bernie Sanders
Picking your opponent is an age-old political manipulation tactic. Republican operatives are having a strange crush on Bernie Sanders.
During Sunday nights Democratic debate, the Republican National Committee made the unusual move of sending no fewer than four real-time e-mails to reporters defending the self-described democratic socialist from attacks by Hillary Clinton or echoing his message against her. Based on their content, one could be forgiven for thinking the RNC communiques came from the Sanders campaign.
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"Sean Spicer, the chief strategist and spokesman for the RNC, spent much of the evening tweeting Sanders-friendly commentary on the debate, often with the pro-Sanders hashtag #FeelTheBern. At one point, Spicer gently chided Sanders for what he deemed a poor response to a question and added, come on we are trying to help u.
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Meanwhile, American Crossroads, a group co-founded by Karl Rove, is airing an ad in Iowa bolstering a core tenet of Sanderss case against Clinton: that she has received large sums of campaign contributions from Wall Street, and therefore can't be trusted to crack down on big banks. Hillary rewarded Wall Street with a $700 billion bailout, then Wall Street made her a multi-millionaire, a narrator in the ad says. Does Iowa really want Wall Street in the White House?
These Republican operatives are attempting to pick their Democratic opponent in the general election, and theyre making clear theyd rather face Sanders than Clinton. It is age-old political manipulation tactic, typically used with some subtlety. It comes as recent polls show Sanders as competitive in Iowa and leading in New Hampshire, where back-to-back Sanders victories could endanger Clinton's national lead.
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The efforts indicate that Republicans aren't buying recent polls that show Sanders out-performing Clinton in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups against GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump. One reason may be that, unlike Sanders, Clinton has been through the wringer of Republican attacks. While a spokesman for Sanders didn't immediately return a request for comment on the Republican attempts to boost him, the senator went out of his way in Sunday's debate to invoke recent surveys to make the case that he's electable.