When people ask why politicians run negative ads, the answer is simple: Because they work. That is the conventional wisdom that has been proven time and again in countless races.
Those ads typically present information about a political opponent that is designed to turn voters away from them. “You can’t trust candidate X because (insert fact or allegation here).”
But Donald Trump, as is often the case, defies traditional political strategies. Consider what has happened—or more accurately what has not happened—in Iowa and South Carolina:
The Win It Back political action committee, which has close ties with the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, has financed extensive ad campaigns against Trump in those two states. The organization is trying to cut into Trump’s popularity among Republicans, so that another of the Republican presidential candidates can gain ground on him.
The New York Times obtained an internal memo penned by David McIntosh of the Club for Growth where he acknowledges that even after testing more than 40 anti-Trump television ads and spending $4 million in Iowa and $2 million in South Carolina, “all attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.”
The memo suggests that the PAC tried everything. The failed ads include Trump’s “handling of the pandemic, promotion of vaccines, praise of Dr. Fauci, insane government spending, failure to build the wall, recent attacks on pro-life legislation, refusal to fight ‘woke’ issues, openness to gun control, and many others.”
“Even when you show video to Republican primary voters—with complete context—of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” McIntosh wrote. Some of the negative ads even helped Trump.
That also explains why all the criticism in the media of Trump—even in conservative publications like the Wall Street Journal and the National Review—doesn’t move the needle. To Trump voters, critical media coverage—including cable news commentary—can all be dumped into the catch-all category of fake news, media elites and Trump haters.
In West Virginia, it would be hard, if not impossible, to find a Republican running for statewide or federal office who is not a Trump supporter. I suspect most are true believers, but I imagine there is also a sprinkling of Republicans who are not fans of the former president, but they are listening to their constituents and going to where the votes are.
To do otherwise, at least in West Virginia, would be political suicide. West Virginia is a lot like Wyoming. Trump got 70 percent of the vote in Wyoming in 2020 and 69 percent in West Virginia. When Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney took on Trump, voters tossed her out on her ear in the Republican primary.
I wondered after last week’s Republican presidential debate why all candidates except for Chris Christie were careful not to be too critical of Donald Trump. Now we know why. It doesn’t work.