It’s obvious Republicans have no idea what to do about Tim Walz

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According to an actual tweet from the New Hampshire Libertarian Party, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, whom Vice President Kamala Harris chose as her running mate last week, “has been a leech his entire life.” The message proceeded to list the various self-serving positions Walz has held, including “public school teacher” and “veteran.” If that sounds deranged, well, that’s because it is. The Trump campaign and its surrogates in the conservative media ecosystem have been desperately trying to paint the 60-year-old Walz as Che Guevara with a Midwestern accent. “This is the most woke, left-wing candidate she could have picked, out of all the names that surfaced,” former American Conservative Union head Matt Schlapp said. That’s obviously untrue. If Harris wanted to swing hard left, she could have chosen any number of progressives: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sens. Sherrod Brown or Bernie Sanders, or even twice-failed former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. They were all about as close to her short list as I was to starting as power forward for the New York Knicks. If Harris wanted to swing hard left, she could have chosen any number of progressives. Instead, she picked “a Norman Rockwell painting sprung to life,” David Axelrod, the mastermind of former President Barack Obama’s political rise, quipped the other day on NPR. On Thursday, Trump held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in which he described Walz as dangerous and out of touch with Americans. In fact, Walz is firmly within the American consensus when it comes to actual policy: He is strongly in favor of reproductive choice, as are 85% of Americans, to some extent; Walz enacted paid family leave, another wildly popular policy; as governor, he has pushed for Minnesota to get its energy from renewable resources, in keeping with Americans’ growing recognition of the threat posed by catastrophic weather and elevated temperatures. If anything, Walz is so thoroughly in the center lane of the policy mainstream that even calling him a progressive may be something of an overstatement. Republicans, on the other hand, want to all but abolish the administrative state (through the Schedule F executive order Trump signed during his first term and hopes to implement in his second) while hounding women who cross state lines to seek abortions. Their version of freedom involves imposing a severe form of Christian nationalism on the country at large. And rather than even try to sell these radical ideas to ordinary Americans, they characterize dissenters as “childless cat ladies” or literal demons. Still, the GOP is trying to paint Walz as the Marxist from Minnesota. Bless their hearts. One loony right-wing activist suggested that Walz changed the flag of Minnesota to resemble that of Somalia. At some point you really have to wonder: How stupid do these people think we are? Judge for yourself. Walz would “unleash HELL ON EARTH,” Trump warned with his trademark restraint. If “hell on Earth” is making lunch free for children in public schools and legalizing cannabis, then Walz is indeed guilty as charged. He is a Midwestern progressive, in the tradition of Robert La Follette, Eugene McCarthy, Paul Wellstone and Al Franken. And he exudes genuine American warmth, the kind that was so refreshing to me and my family when we arrived here from the Soviet Union. “Tim Walz is the dad an entire generation wish[ed] they had instead of the one they lost to Fox News,” one social media user joked. The same country that welcomed my family, along with thousands of other Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union, could one day be led by JD Vance, who recently endorsed a book about how progressives are “unhuman.” Still, the GOP is trying to paint Walz as the Marxist from Minnesota. Bless their hearts. Trump must be seething as the edgy, joyless Vance creepily follows Harris around the Midwest, where she and Walz have been drawing enormous crowds. At one event, a reporter asked Vance what made him smile. In response, Vance abruptly attacked the reporter, calling it a “bogus question.” Walz practically looks like JFK in comparison to this bearded disaster — and Trump must know it. “Republicans Simply Can’t Figure Out How to Knock Down Tim Walz,” went a recent Vanity Fair headline. Here’s a crazy idea: Don’t bother. Just offer better policies. Forget about Walz and simply tell the American people what you plan to do when you return to the Oval Office. Give them a reason to vote for you, and you won’t have to worry about the Democrats. For example, Trump tried to brand Walz as “Tampon Tim” for his support of transgender rights. As a matter of fact, Walz probably is to the left of most Americans when it comes to protections related to medical treatments for gender dysphoria. That gives Trump an opening — not to attack Walz, but to introduce ideas of his own. Of course, that’s very hard to do when your campaign is practically idea-free. So “Tampon Tim” it is. On the whole, I suspect Walz will provide a temporary boost to Harris in this critical early stretch while in the long run doing little to either help or hinder her campaign to any substantial degree. The right’s attacks on him are another matter. They reveal a paucity of ideas, a complete surrender to the Trumpian style of relentless attack. It’s an exhausting way to do politics. Even worse, it’s not very effective.