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As the ugly attacks on Kamala Harris from the right take shape, House GOP leaders are warning their fellow Republicans not to focus on her race or gender in their criticism of the de facto Democratic presidential nominee.
The racist and misogynistic attacks on the vice president from conservative commentators and GOP lawmakers began almost immediately after she announced that she will seek her party’s nomination. Some lawmakers have called her a “DEI hire,” suggesting that Harris — who has served as a U.S. senator, a California attorney general and a San Francisco district attorney — is where she is due to identity politics and not because of her accomplishments.
The racist and misogynistic attacks on the vice president from conservative commentators and GOP lawmakers began almost immediately after she announced that she will seek her party’s nomination.
It appears that the top brass in the House GOP are trying to steer members of their party away from such bigoted attacks. At a closed-door meeting Tuesday, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, urged his party members to instead focus on Harris’ record with the Biden administration, Politico reported.
Afterward, House Speaker Mike Johnson told Politico that this election “has nothing to do with race” and that it’s a comparison between the two candidates’ strengths and their ideas for how to solve the country’s problems.
“This election will be about policies and not personalities,” the Louisiana Republican told reporters after the meeting, according to The Associated Press. “This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris, and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”
Whether such calls will sink in among House Republicans remains to be seen — they certainly do not seem to have gotten through to their presidential nominee. According to NBC News, while on a call hosted by the Republican National Committee on Tuesday, Donald Trump accused Harris of having “played the race card on a level you rarely see” in debates with Joe Biden during the Democratic presidential primaries in 2020.