Do you really not understand how this works?

Yes, I do. You can tie someone to a negative thing if there's a connection which fits into or supplements, rather than contradicts, a voter's perception of a candidate.

The key is that Dukakis supported the furlough program, and was a Massachusetts liberal Democrat to boot. So it was easy to tie him to Willie Horton. The story was consistent.

"Her Emails" is the same thing - they fit things that voters were inclined to believe about Clinton, that she might be a little dodgy about following the rules that other people had to follow. Because she did the thing. She had the private email server, so it was easy to paint her with the idea that she had done something wrong with that email server.

But with Project 2025 and Trump, the story doesn't check out. It's not consistent. The story doesn't mesh. Of course, Trump didn't do anything with Project 2025 or Heritage, and I find it completely credible that he regarded both of them as too unimportant to notice or pay attention to, even if someone mentioned them to him.

But the key is that it's completely out-of-character for him to get involved with a think tank at all, unless there was money to be made from it. His entire political identity is based on not being accepted by those types of traditional GOP institutions - he's the oaf that the Heritage folks would have made fun of, had he not been elected President and changed the game.

We can see why Clinton would want an email server, or why Dukakis might support a furlough program - but there's no possible story you can tell for Trump to get involved with a pencil-neck poindexter old-school conservative think tank type thing. It's exactly the opposite of what Trump would do! A scheme to defraud his supporters, a plan to siphon money from his PACs into his pockets....sure. But Trump getting involved with a think tank to promote policy statements? It's the most un-Trumpy thing imaginable.

If you want to run an ad campaign claiming that Trump would implement a national ban on abortion, even though he says he doesn't want that, then do that. You can! It's not the most supportable claim - but no one's going to stop you, and he did kill Roe v. Wade. The Project 2025 stuff is just an out-of-key note that clashes with the story you're telling about Trump - there's no need for it.