A CNN panel lambasted Democrats over efforts to “prop up” candidates that the party labeled “extreme” in Republican primaries Sunday.
“What is interesting, too, that we are seeing these races play out is the way that Democrats are handling it,” CNN guest host Manu Raju said on “Inside Politics.” “They’re meddling in some of these Republican primaries trying to prop up these candidates who they say are extreme, but are propping them up because they think they can beat them in the general election.”
Raju played one ad run by the Democratic Governors’ Association promoting Dan Cox, the eventual Republican nominee, in the Maryland gubernatorial election.
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“I think we need to acknowledge that it’s a clear strategy, right?” CNN White House correspondent Jeremy Diamond said. “Because not only did we see it in Maryland, but we’ve seen it play out across gubernatorial races in several other states … Josh Shapiro running ads for Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania comes to mind, for example. And look, they are trying to get the more extreme candidate to face the Democrat in the general election. They believe that it gives them a better chance.” (RELATED: ‘A Difference In Leadership’: Democrats Are Losing Support Among Minority Voters)
Both Diamond and Raju noted that Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said the Democrats were “playing with fire.”
“You know, it is interesting, just about a month ago, Pelosi … told her caucus in a private meeting, ‘You know, we’re not going to win on the democracy argument,’” Washington Post congressional reporter Marianne Sotomayor said, before noting that many vulnerable Democrats were still preferring to face candidates closely tied to Trump.
CNN National Affair Analyst Kasie Hunt pointed out that both parties meddled in each other’s primary elections in the past, but that Democrats risked undercutting their arguments about democracy.
“If you want to believe what Liz Cheney and what many of the people in the January 6th Committee are saying, it’s that everybody — everybody who cares about democracy needs to clean up their act and make that their number one priority,” Hunt said. “And so, that is my question for Democrats …You’ve got this political message about our democracy and about what’s important. Propping up these kinds of candidates like a Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania or a Kari Lake potentially in Arizona, that is contrary to everything else that you are telling the American people about where you stand and what you believe and what’s important.”
The Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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