The thousand-Democrat primary is well underway, but the Republicans are also gearing up for the 2020 election. And while Democrats have often in the past struggled to see beyond the presidency, Republicans are eyeing as many fights as they can. The GOP playbook for the next 21 months leading up to the presidential election is detailed in a new report from the New York Times. From the article, titled "Republicans Already Are Demonizing Democrats as Socialists and Baby Killers":

That, at least, is what Republicans want voters to think, as they seek to demonize Democrats well in advance of the 2020 elections by painting them as left-wing crazies who will destroy the American economy, murder newborn babies and turn a blind eye to bigotry against Jews.

The unusually aggressive assault, which Republican officials and strategists outlined in interviews last week, is meant to strangle the new Democratic majority in its infancy. It was set in motion this month by President Trump, who used his State of the Union address to rail against “new calls to adopt socialism in our country” and mischaracterize legislation backed by Democrats in New York and Virginia as allowing “a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.”

Republicans have also been smearing opponents as anti-Semites despite the white nationalist wing propping up their own party.

But this has been their playbook for years now. During the 2016 Republican primaries, the candidates tried to outdo each other with horrifying, ultimately made-up details about abortion, fetal tissue donation, and reproductive health, though to their credit they mildly calmed down after three people were gunned down in a Colorado Planned Parenthood. And Congressional Republicans declared everything Barack Obama did as president part of a barely-secret Marxist takeover. Even the Affordable Care Act, legislation that did nothing to challenge or undermine health care as a free market commodity, was somehow "socialism."

What's different now is that a small number of Democrats and independent politicians aren't afraid of running on socialist policies, including freshmen representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. In fact, Ocasio-Cortez sees new minority congresswomen like herself as the primary targets for GOP red-baiting, telling the Times, “I guess they used that argument to its end, and so they have to find someone new. And who else to use except folks like myself and other freshmen congresswomen? We’re least like them in every way possible, so I think it’s a potent symbol.”

Considering how few new ideas Republicans have on any issues—trickle-down economics, privatize everything, "freedom" means going bankrupt to pay for chemotherapy—it makes sense that their electoral strategy is the same as it ever was.