'Desperate' Republicans in 'panic mode' as new attack line fails: report

What happened

RawStory reports that prominent Republicans are calling Democratic candidates “weird,” reviving an insult Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz used against Donald Trump, JD Vance and other Republicans during the 2024 campaign. Sen. Tim Scott used it at a Republican convention in Dallas, Vance directed it at Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, Trump has applied it to Texas Senate nominee James Talarico, and the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA, Inc. featured it in an ad against Talarico.

The report says Republicans adopted the attack amid low approval ratings for Trump, persistent inflation, gasoline prices above $4 a gallon and a war in Iran that had lasted more than seven months. Republican strategist Mike Madrid and unnamed or Democratic-aligned sources characterized the tactic as desperation or panic. Republican committee spokespeople defended it, while former Harris campaign pollster Geoff Garin said the same insult performed poorly in that campaign’s internal polling.

The people with power chose the distraction

This is not merely a collection of candidates reaching for the same lazy adjective. The president, the vice president, a senator, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and a well-funded super PAC possess the institutional power to set the party’s message. They are choosing personal ridicule.

That choice matters because these actors are not spectators trapped beneath economic conditions or war. They control the White House, shape federal policy and command a national political apparatus. When they replace an account of their governing record with playground contempt, the evasion comes from the people most responsible for explaining what government is doing.

“Weird” is an alibi, not an argument

The attack supplies no information about El-Sayed or Talarico’s policies, qualifications or conduct. Its function is to make the target socially suspect without having to establish wrongdoing. Vance’s additional description of El-Sayed as “evil” escalates the accusation while remaining just as empty in the reporting presented.

That is the misdirection: voters are invited to judge whether Democratic candidates feel culturally normal while the party controlling the presidency avoids a substantive defense of conditions RawStory identifies as politically damaging. Prices and war require explanations. “Weird” requires only repetition.

The panic claim outruns the evidence

RawStory’s framing is stronger than its proof. “Panic mode” comes from an unnamed Democratic operative, while “desperate” is Madrid’s political assessment. Those comments support an interpretation of Republican anxiety; they do not independently establish the party’s internal state.

The article also provides no approval figure, polling date or electoral forecast demonstrating that Republican midterm chances are “drooping.” Even the insult’s supposed failure is complicated by Garin’s statement that it also tested poorly when Democrats used it. The defensible conclusion is narrower: Republican leaders are repeating an apparently weak attack while declining to show that voters respond to it.

The machinery of empty politics

The most revealing response came from RNC press secretary Natalie Baldassarre, who said no study was needed. That is political messaging severed from evidence by declaration. The party does not need to know whether the line persuades voters because the line also serves another purpose: feeding partisan media, disciplining supporters and keeping attention on identity rather than performance.

The larger pattern is familiar. Institutions with power reduce governing disputes to social revulsion, then treat repetition as proof. The consequence is not merely a worse campaign slogan. It is an electorate offered insults where accountability should be—and a governing party attempting to turn its opponents’ alleged strangeness into cover for its own record.

Thanks to Raw Story

Source: ‘Desperate’ Republicans in ‘panic mode’ as new attack line fails: report