Democrats are striving to make “MAGA” a badge of infamy on the political stage, injecting the label into debates on Capitol Hill and pinning it on any Republican that gets in their way.
Just ask Asa Hutchinson.
Mr. Hutchinson is about as far from MAGA as a major national Republican figure can be these days. His political roots reach back to Ronald Reagan, and he is a longtime and strident critic of former President Donald Trump, the father of the MAGA movement.
That didn’t stop Democrats from slapping him with the MAGA label when Mr. Hutchinson, who most recently was governor of Arkansas, announced he was running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“Whether it is the Democratic Party or President Biden, they are certainly trying to make MAGA the issue in the 2024 election, and it illustrates their belief that Trump is someone they would love to run against,” Mr. Hutchinson told The Washington Times. “So they trying to pigeonhole all Republicans in that same way.”
He’s far from alone.
Mr. Trump played no hand in writing House Republicans’ new border security bill, but that didn’t stop Democrats from blasting it as MAGA racism. And the former president is not part of the GOP’s plans to pursue deep spending cuts to tame the government’s runaway debt, but Mr. Biden still called it MAGA austerity.
Make America Great Again may have propelled Mr. Trump to the White House in 2016, but Democrats now believe the label is political poison that will dent politicians and policies just through the name alone.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer is a staunch believer in the tactic. He has delivered speech after speech on the chamber floor spotting “MAGA extremism” in everything from Supreme Court rulings to budget negotiations.
Polls suggest it is a smart strategy.
NBC News last month released a national survey of 1,000 adults that found 24% had a positive view of the MAGA movement, compared to 45% who had a negative view. Others were unfamiliar with the slogan or unsure of where they stood.
The findings included 37% who had a “very negative” view of the movement.
Black Lives Matter was far more popular. The Democratic and Republican parties also received higher marks.
Many in the GOP are still happy to embrace Mr. Trump’s MAGA politics. Indeed, it is a prerequisite for winning party primaries in many districts.
It also has spawned some of Republicans’ most identifiable voices including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
Still, some Republicans wonder about the electoral consequences of being tied to the MAGA label, fairly or not.
A Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy released a poll last month showed 18% of the American public and 38% of all Republicans identify as “MAGAites.”
Strikingly, 52% of those self-identified MAGA Republicans believe Russia’s Vladimir Putin is a better president than Mr. Biden.
For his part, Mr. Biden has fully embraced the MAGA-as-a-weapon strategy.
His reelection launch video complained of “MAGA extremists” poised to take away Americans’ freedoms, while photos of the pro-Trump mob storming the Capitol filled the screen.
Mr. Biden also used Mr. Trump as his foil in the 2022 campaign, driving the former president back into the headlines and helping frame the congressional elections as a choice between two visions, rather than a referendum on his own two years in office.
“There is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country,” Mr. Biden warned in a speech at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.
The strategy was successful, helping Democrats limit their losses in the House and hold on to the Senate majority.
Democrats now say if the strategy isn’t broken, why fix it?
“We see pretty consistently that some of the best-performing online content is when we are talking about MAGA Republicans, and talking not just about MAGA Republicans writ large, but also talking about the agenda itself,” said a Democratic committee official who requested anonymity to discuss party strategy. “Going back to the fall it was pretty evident that messaging move as a good way to paint the midterms and going ahead into the 2024 election.”
As for Mr. Hutchinson, he is confident the MAGA-infused attacks against him are ineffective and could even help him because he is trying to appeal to all Republicans.
“I am like many conservatives,” he said. “I supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election because I thought he was the best option, but since then he has changed, the context has changed and his leadership has changed.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.