Subject: Re: Project 2025
"Most of what's in Project 2025 is just a restatement of policies that Trump has already advocated. As you point out, he has a record. So don't waste resources trying to make Project 2025 a thing so that you can criticize Trump for Schedule F - just criticize Trump for Schedule F. It was his policy. The fact that Heritage included it in Project 2025 doesn't add anything."

I think you are completely missing the point of tying him to Project 2025.

One of the things the GOP does far better than the Democrats is they very good at using vague words to attack their opponents (or opponent's policies and bills) so that the voters can fill in the blanks on why they individually hate their opponent or their opponent's bills.

There are voters out there that when polled on the individual parts of what is in Project 2025 might really like a couple of portions, mildly like some others, be indifferent to most of it, and really hate some portions. You can spend a lot of time and energy demonizing each individual part, but if someone actually likes one individual part then your effort is wasted. By attaching the whole thing to Trump and attacking it. You are allowing voters to fill in the blanks on the parts they hate.

"You tie a candidate to a more extreme external thing when they don't have a record - or if their record isn't useful for your oppo strategy. So you tie a moderate Republican to the Koch Brothers or Donald Trump or whomever; you tie a moderate Democrat to AOC or Nancy Pelosi or whomever. You don't do it as part of the campaign against the extreme candidate with a record."

Generally true, but not true when it is an external thing that can somewhat credibly summarize your opponent's policies and is unpopular. Especially when much of the terribleness of the candidate's actual record doesn't seem to register with voters. There are generally two reasons for this. For one, much of the terribleness of Trump's actual record has been overwhelmed by COVID. Trump was set to run up huge deficits even before COVID, but now all of the terribleness of the huge deficits can be mixed in with COVID and thought of as a once a century catastrophe that wasn't Trump's fault. Considering the economy he inherited, the job and employment record of Trump (even before COVID) was mediocre. Now that mediocre job record is forgotten about because it was overwhelmed by COVID. It is hard to run against Trump's economic record simply because of COVID. Voters don't blame presidents for pandemics. The second reason is the whitewashing of the rest of his record. January 6th turned off a lot of people when it happened, but it no longer has that effect for a good size portion of the electorate. For many people who are just casual followers of the news they think January 6th is just all about partisanship. I forget the term you used the other day to describe the process of how the GOP makes it appear someone like Biden is a scummy person so that way voters can feel better about voting for an actual scummy person (Trump). That has taken place and whitewashed Trumps record. Enough articles of impeachment against Biden (and now Harris) have been filed that it doesn't matter if they vote for a twice impeached Trump.

Project 2025 better summarizes Trump than his COVID forgotten, whitewashed actual record.

"I'm not sure it would change my mind if Trump were actually involved in Project 2025 (I think it would still be kind of pointless); but since he wasn't, it's even more of a waste of resources that could better be applied elsewhere, because it's marginally harder to convince people of things that are false than true. He has no idea what's in it, and almost had no idea it was even being put together. When an Administration loses an election, there are literally thousands and thousands of people that were political appointees in that Administration that are now out of a job - so the fact that a few percent of those former staffers ended up either working for Heritage or got paid to write a piece of their "Mandate" is utterly unremarkable. There's no way that Heritage's "Mandate" is actually Trump's blueprint for a second term; they publish this thing every time they think a Republican might win the WH, but it hasn't been important or influential for decades - pretty much since Reagan."

Wow. You are really missing the forest for the trees.

Is Project 2025 a perfect blueprint or mandate of what Trump will accomplish given a 2nd term? Of course not. Refusing to attack it because it wasn't Trump who mandated its creation is silly though. Just because its creation was not funded and directed by Trump does not mean it isn't a fairly credible summary of many of his positions and a great summary of the positions of many of the people who will hold powerful positions in any 2nd Trump administration. Put another way, the GOP spend a lot of time spreading the message that Democrats like Biden want to control people's lives. Biden wants to control what they eat, how they spend their money, what stoves they can put in their houses. Now Biden has never authorized or had people put together any such mandate about anything like that but the GOP continued to tie that blatantly false claim around Biden's neck. Why do you think that is? It worked. Tying Project 2025 to Trump is certain less false than that.

So even though Trump wasn't directly involved in the creation of Project 2025. It certainly fits his brand and matches many of his policies and he has been adjacently involved for certain. Furthermore, something like Project 2025 shows what will happen in a potential 2nd Trump administration when Trump doesn't care about a particular topic. During his first term, Trump didn't care (or was too lazy) to worry about things like selecting circuit court or appellate court judges. He wasn't going to go through the resumes of a dozen (or even just 3 or 4) people for each open position. He pretty much outsourced that to Heritage. Similarly, when it comes to a 2nd administration. Trump isn't going to be interested in appointing a 2nd undersecretary to the Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Education. He is going to outsource selections like those to Heritage. So Heritage gets someone into those positions who can drive policies towards Project 2025. Sure, they would never get to do anything major that Trump clearly was against, but they can certainly bend and shape policy in those directions and openly push for things he doesn't care about.

Finally, one reason for Democrats to tie Project 2025 to Trump is that even if it doesn't help them win the election, it gives them a quick easy soundbite to lots of Trump and GOP policies when they are the opposition party in the next administration. Make Project 2025 unpopular and whenever Trump or the GOP try to pass any bills that can be remotely tied back to Project 2025 and Democratic Senators and Representatives can go on TV and talk about how Bill XYZ is Trump trying to push his radical Project 2025 agenda.