The Grassroots Gets The Kamala Harris Threat, Does The Trump Campaign?

One of our observations after forty-eight years of working on or covering presidential campaigns for conservative media is that your average conservative movement activist understands politics a lot better than your average highly paid Washington, DC

establishment political consultant.

So, we work diligently to keep in touch with grassroots conservatives and to monitor primary sources of conservative sentiment about issues and elections. One of our favorite primary sources of conservative sentiment is letters to the editor of local newspapers, particularly in conservative communities.

Last weekend we pulled this insightful letter from the Naples Daily News, in deep red Collier County, Florida.

Time for GOP to focus

President Trump, you had millions of viewers from both parties listening to your acceptance speech at the RNC convention, and you whiffed. Your acceptance speech was awful, rambling, unfocused, outdated. The Democratic Party has shown themselves to be shameless, lying, hypocrites that will do anything to preserve power. To win this election, I urge you to focus on the issues. No more name calling. No more grievances about the 2020 election. Focus on the future and the issues that matter most to all Americans. What are your goals and how do your plans differ from four more years of the Biden/Harris plans? Focus on the border crisis and deporting illegal immigrants, lowering inflation, restoring energy independence, restoring and improving education outcomes that have been decimated by failed COVID policies, end the DEI/woke nonsense that has put incompetent people in critical roles, restore law and order, end the Russia/Ukraine conflict and the Israel/Iran conflict, reverse Iran’s sphere of influence. Do not underestimate Kamala. She’s been schooled by the best politicians in the world, she’s well-funded, and she’s got the best screenwriters that Hollywood can offer writing her lines and the message lines of the media. Can she serve as our president? No, but she can play one on TV while the unelected power behind the Democratic Party runs the country. We can’t let that happen, again.

Michael Mainelli, Estero

There’s so much to unpack in this one short letter we will focus on the two most salient points, namely that elections are about the future and that Kamala Harris is a media creation, and a very successful one.

As CHQ Chairman Richard A Viguerie observed in his book TAKEOVER, elections are about the future, “Think of Winston Churchill. His record was stellar; however, having just saved Great Britain from the Nazis and helped lead the Allies to victory in the Second World War, on July 5, 1945, he lost the election to lead the country in peacetime that he had just saved in wartime. British voters were looking for a different vision of the future…”.

British voters were looking for a vision and a plan to end the privation of the war and rebuild their peacetime society, Mr. Churchill ran on his record of heroic blood, sweat and toil, and it didn’t sell.

President Trump is in much the same position today.

He has come through the fire of an assassination attempt, and is still under fire from Democrat lawfare, but those are things that – while they are undoubtedly personal to him – are remote to the average voter on the street.

Undecided voters are not interested in the grievances of the past and only the truest of Trump true believers are motivated by the idea of payback for the slings and arrows (and real bullets) he has suffered.

What survey after survey and conversation after conversation tells us is that voters want to know what Donald Trump is going to do to repair the damage that four years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ policies have done to the economy, to our national security and to the cultural fabric of our nation.

In short, as Mr. Mainelli put it so well:

Focus on the future and the issues that matter most to all Americans. What are your goals and how do your plans differ from four more years of the Biden/Harris plans? Focus on the border crisis and deporting illegal immigrants, lowering inflation, restoring energy independence, restoring and improving education outcomes that have been decimated by failed COVID policies, end the DEI/woke nonsense that has put incompetent people in critical roles, restore law and order, end the Russia/Ukraine conflict and the Israel/Iran conflict, reverse Iran’s sphere of influence.

When Donald Trump is focused, and on his game, he does that better than any Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan. With only about 100 days until the election, staying focused on the future is one of the most important attributes of a successful presidential campaign.

The second crucial point Mr. Mainelli made is one that is equally underappreciated by the establishment Republican political class and too many conservative commentators: Don’t underestimate the ability of Democrats to remake Kamala Harris through the use of #Kamalaflauge.

Conservative social media and editorial pages are awash in memes and witticisms about how bad Kamala Harris is, how lacking in real world accomplishment she is, and her unsavory association with Far-Left California Democrat icon Willie Brown – but relatively few voters are ever going to see any of that and fewer still are going to be persuaded by it.

Instead, between now and the election Harris is going to be remade into a combination of Rosa Parks and Joan of Arc; a breaker of “glass ceilings” and a defender of a woman’s right to choose, who will be the first woman president, and a “person of color” no less.

The remake of Kamala Harris is going to be the greatest Hollywood production ever, on the level of Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments and Cleopatra combined. And when the remake is over, no one is going to recognize that the Kamala Harris on the ballot and the Kamala Harris of the witty memelords are the same candidate.

What’s the answer for the Trump campaign?

A good start would be to, as Mr. Mainelli suggested – focus on the future. Paint the contrast between the positive future of liberty and prosperity proven by Donald Trump’s policies and the dark future of tyranny and decline delivered by the Democrats, with Kamala Harris as their leader. And be prepared to cut through the Hollywood #Kamalaflauge and show the real Kamala Harris.

• 2024 Election

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