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By Jesus Mesa
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Vice President Kamala Harris, gearing up for a heated faceoff against former President Donald Trump in November, has sparked sharp and immediate criticism from conservative circles with her selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, signaling the GOP's forthcoming attack strategy.
The GOP's anticipated attack lines were already emerging on cable news Tuesday morning, starting with a relentless focus on crime and disorder, particularly the summer of 2020 riots in Minneapolis that followed the murder of George Floyd and happened while Walz's was governor.
There have also been allegations from conservative influencers that by bypassing Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, Harris is bowing to antisemitism among the party's left wing.
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"She got this person that could be a governing partner, regardless of the political consequences of that," Kayleigh McEnany, a former Trump official, said on Fox News.
"This is a choice of style over substance. You look at Governor Walz's record, and it's pretty progressive," said Josh Kraushaar, a Fox News Radio analyst and editor-in-chief of Jewish Insider.
For some Republicans, one of the most significant points where they see an effective attack on Walz is focusing on the Minnesota governor's response to the 2020 protests and riots following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, an event that occurred "under his watch." Walz was criticized at the time for being slow to deploy the National Guard against demonstrations that were turning increasingly violent and unruly.
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"I imagine Republicans are going to be focusing on his record, the riots in the Twin Cities after the George Floyd murder. There's going to be a lot of criticism from both Republicans and Democrats," said Kraushaar.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier also predicted that crime and the decision to go with "the most extremist candidate" instead of what he said were more moderate choices like Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro, will be front and center for Republicans in the upcoming weeks.
To that point, the RNC put out a statement saying that by choosing Walz, Harris "has proven that she will always put criminals, illegal immigrants, and the radical fringe of her party above American families."
After the news of Walz's pick was broken on CNN, the Trump campaign issued its own statement calling him "a dangerously liberal extremist."
Back on Fox, there were questions that, by not picking Shapiro, the popular Pennsylvania governor, Harris was playing to elements of the Democratic party's base that has been largely critical of Shapiro's support of Israel and its offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
"There's no doubt that Democrats in the Harris campaign were worried about the prospect of anti-Israel demonstrators taking place in Chicago and really causing a ruckus at the moment when the party needed to unify," said Kraushaar. "It may have ultimately scuttled Shapiro's ability to be a history-making selection on the ticket."
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
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