If you think the memes about Bill Gates wants to put microchips in the Covid-19 vaccines and control the world’s population, George Soros is paying the Black Lives Matter protestors. Antifa and BLM are coming to your neighborhood to wreak havoc are bad, wait till you see what Republicans, through their proxies, have planned for Biden.
If you are on social media, all of the above have undoubtedly shown up on your feed. Considering the way the algorithms are built on Facebook, so designed to provide you content that most aligns with your interests, tastes and people you interact with; you can imagine what conservatives are bombarded with each day as they are targeted by every right wing fringe group, along with QAnon, the Russians and the Trump campaign.
As Trump continues to fall in the polls and the inevitable outcome becomes more apparent, these attempts to scare the public will only become more pernicious. The theory of the “big lie” used in propaganda tactics states that the more outrageous a lie is, the more likely it is to be believed by those who are already predisposed to have a negative view of the candidate. We watched “Reverend Wright”, “death panels”, birtherism”, Benghazi, “but her emails” catch fire with the Republican base during the past few Presidential elections. This time it’s Antifa, Corona Virus related conspiracy theories. These are just the warm up act however.
The television ads attacking Biden I have seen so far are not subtle, taking on the the “Biden is a pervert” narrative. They show images and videos of him touching several young girl’s hair and kissing them on the head. It’s no accident that Trump is talking about pedophiles and the Senate is putting a bill together to raise the profile on this issue. They didn’t suddenly get interested in the crime of pedophelia, this is their 2020 strategy to run against Biden, though they won’t be doing it directly. The GOP won’t leave their fingerprints on this strategy. They do understand that the emotion of disgust has a particularly strong impact on conservative voters. They want to surround Biden with this aura of perversion. To attempt to make him even more unacceptable than Trump.
Republicans don’t expect to win this contest, they do believe they can mortally wound Biden and weaken his chances to grab the moral high ground. Just creating doubt around this can be devastating. They will have grown women trotted out to say how “uncomfortable” ole Joe made them feel. It will be ugly to watch.
Meanwhile politically, the GOP is looking toward the 2022 midterms after the current recession becomes fully realized so they can blame the economy on Biden and Democrats. The same 2010 playbook that took back the Senate and House following Obama’s big win is their big gambit. Republicans just need one house of Congress to turn Biden in to a lame duck until 2024. This is no conspiracy theory I am proposing, this is exactly what they are going to attempt. Are the Democrats better prepared this time? I sure hope so.