Former Minnesota GOP Governor Sums Up Tim Walz VP Pick: ‘Bernie Sanders in hunting gear’; Harris Leaning into ‘pro-Hamas,’ ‘progressive’ Wings of Democrat Party with Walz VP Pick: GOP Strategist

Former Minnesota GOP governor sums up Tim Walz VP pick: ‘Bernie Sanders in hunting gear’:

Pawlenty said Democrats have doubled down on a ‘democrat-socialist’ agenda with Walz

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, said the choice of current Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate shows Democrats are doubling down on a “democrat-socialist agenda.”

Pawlenty, a former GOP presidential candidate who was governor of Minnesota from 2003-2011, told FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul Walz is “philosophically and politically” aligned with Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, but brings “a different style and different geography” to the 2024 Democratic ticket.

“She has sort of the San Francisco, California, vibe. He’s going to have sort of the Bernie Sanders in hunting gear vibe,” said Pawlenty. “So, it’s the same product, just in different wrappers.”

Harris announced her selection of Walz to be the Democratic nominee for vice president in a social media post that praised his progressive record.

“As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his,” Harris said.

“He worked with Republicans to pass infrastructure investments. He cut taxes for working families. He passed a law to provide paid family and medical leave to Minnesotan families. He made Minnesota the first state in the country to pass a law providing constitutional abortion protections after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and as an avid hunter, he passed a bill requiring universal background checks for gun purchases.”

Walz’s record is a delight to progressives but also fodder for Republicans eager to define Harris and her running mate as too liberal and too extreme. Pawlenty said the Trump campaign is likely to go after Walz for his slow response to the 2020 George Floyd riots in Minneapolis, during which a police station was torched. He also noted that Walz presided over the largest spending increases in state history and a scandal over COVID-19 pandemic relief fraud. —>READ MORE HERE

Harris leaning into ‘pro-Hamas,’ ‘progressive’ wings of Democrat Party with Walz VP pick: GOP strategist

Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate two weeks out from the Democratic National Convention comes as a bit of a “shock,” and GOP strategists suggest it could hurt her in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, where Gov. Josh Shapiro was purported to have been the favored choice.

“Kamala Harris did not pick Josh Shapiro because antisemitic progressives did not like that he is Jewish,” Mike Berg, spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee told Fox News Digital in a statement. “It was Harris’ first major decision as the nominee, and she caved to the pro-Hamas contingency within the Democratic Party.”

Berg continued that Walz “reinforces” Harris’ “biggest weaknesses: crime and immigration.”

“Kamala Harris helped bankroll the 2020 riots in Minnesota when she promoted the Minnesota Freedom Fund. Walz let Minnesota burn. Kamala Harris supported decriminalizing illegal immigration and abolishing ICE — Walz supported making Minnesota a sanctuary state,” he said.

Earlier this week, a decades-old article resurfaced in which Shapiro wrote of being an Israeli army volunteer and disparaged the Palestinian people. The Philadelphia Inquirer uncovered the essay that he wrote for the Campus Times, the student newspaper of the University of Rochester, from which Shapiro graduated in 1995. In the article, Shapiro stressed his view that “Palestinians will not peacefully coexist,” because “they do not have the capabilities to establish their own homelands and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States.”

Strategists are speculating that Harris may have been primed to pick Shapiro up until the resurfaced op-ed, which could have distanced some of the party’s more progressive base who believe an Israeli ceasefire will put an end to Palestinian casualties. —>READ MORE HERE

Source