Republicans Are Struggling to Paint Tim Walz as a Villain
Republicans struggle to find an effective line of attack against Gov. Tim Walz, who was picked as Kamala Harris' running mate.
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Republicans Are Struggling to Paint Tim Walz as a Villain
The GOP is scrambling to find a line of attack against Kamala Harris's VP pick — and it's not going well
August 7, 2024
Tim Walz at Temple University's Liacouras Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Aug. 6, 2024. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Tim Walz has made his debut as Kamala Harris’s running mate, and Republicans are struggling to apply their standard villainization playbook to the Minnesota governor.
Walz has been making waves for weeks now as a good-natured, relatable politician with a particular aptitude for dressing down the Republican agenda in terms that any voter can understand — and the GOP hates it.
Republicans are scrambling to paint the governor-turned-VP candidate as a devilish Marxist hellbent on running the country into the ground — their usual stuff — while leveling a bunch of other really weird attacks. Here are some of their most pathetic attempts to turn voters against Walz.
As they tend to do when they meet someone they don’t like, Republicans quickly centered their attacks on Walz around their own obsession with children’s reproductive organs.
In 2023, Walz signed into law legislation that provided free access to menstrual products “to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12.” The benefit extended to transgender students who used the boy’s bathroom — and some Minnesota Republicans even voted for it.
No one should be required to explain their need for a tampon, but for some right-wing agitators, the legislation was an in to attack Walz.
Others were quick to point out that not only was the bill inclusive to LGBTQ+ students, but access to free sanitary products is also a boon to low-income students and their families, having them in all restrooms ensures they are available if the women’s restroom is out of service, and — as explained by Amanda Bynes in She’s The Man — they’re great for nosebleeds.
In a statement responding to Walz’s selection as Harris’s running mate, the Trump campaign attacked the governor for “embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote,” seemingly forgetting that the former president is a convicted felon whose ability to vote is no longer guaranteed in every state.
It wouldn’t be a Republican smear campaign without a heavy dose of racism. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali-American population in the United States, with more than 86,000 Somali-Americans residing in the state amidst their total population of almost 6 million people.
Republicans falsely accused Walz of changing Minnesota’s state flag to more closely resemble that of Somalia. In 2023, the legislature moved to redesign the flag amid concerns from local indigenous populations that the old flag contained offensive stereotypes about their communities. The redesign was conducted through a public survey and highlights the architecture of the state Capitol, the shape of the state, and its fame as the “Land of 10,000
Lakes.”
The idea that Walz changed the flag to match that of Somalia was also repeatedly highlighted on Fox News.
Trump’s former adviser and anti-immigration hawk Stephen Miller claimed on Fox that Harris and Walsh want to turn “the entire Midwest into Mogadishu” — the capital of Somalia — and attacked the presence of refugees in the U.S.
It’s no shock that Republicans would zero in on a proportionally small migrant community to malign Walz, that doesn’t make it any less gross.\
A wife and two kids? Unthinkable.
The race for the Democratic vice-presidential slot came down to two main contenders: Walz and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish.
According to CNN, Walz was ultimately chosen for a variety of factors, including his natural rapport with Harris. NBC News reported on comments from one Democratic strategist who said that “polling showed Shapiro wouldn’t help that much more than the others,” in terms of winning Pennsylvania. Concerns were raised about his response to pro-Palestinian protests in the state, as well as his public sparring with teachers unions, his handling of sexual harassment claims against his aide, and ongoing questions over an unsolved alleged murder he oversaw as attorney general.
But despite the many factors that influence a VP pick, Republicans were quick to accuse the Harris campaign of antisemitism.
“No Jews allowed at the top of the Democratic Party,” conservative radio host Erick Erickson wrote on X, to which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish, sarcastically responded: “News to me.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) claimed that Shapiro’s Jewish faith was “clearly was a major factor” in the decision and that Harris “was reluctant to put a vice presidential nominee on the ticket with Jewish heritage because they’re having a split in the Democratic Party.”
Shapiro himself dismissed the notion, throwing his full support behind Harris at a Tuesday night rally in Philadelphia. “My faith teaches me that no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it. That means that each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, to get in the game, and to do our part,” he said.
In what apparently was an attempt at an insult, Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro attempted to take a dig at Walz by comparing him to another famed Midwesterner: Saturday Night Live legend Chris Farley.
“Meet Tim Walz, who lives in a van down by the river,” Shapiro wrote on X alongside a photo of Walz, referencing one of Farley’s most famous sketches.
The joke didn’t land, with users pointing out that people love Farley, who continues to be one of the most famous American comedians to ever bless the nation with his craft. Shapiro later doubled down in another post, comparing Walz to famed performer Don Rickles.
Funny? Beloved? Fame beyond their generation? You sure got him Ben.
WALZ THE GODDAMN BOOGEYMAN! or as Nap would put it, WALZ IS A PROBLEM!
