Having vanquished Hillary Clinton and taken control of both houses of Congress, the G.O.P. is in need of a good nemesis to keep its rank and file in line and its base angry at the right people. Clinton, who proved an exceptional foil for Donald Trump, has largely faded from public view, her value as a villain diminished by the totality of her defeat. The fiery old pugilist Harry Reid, who always proved a willing sparring partner, retired from the Senate last month. His replacement, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, doesn’t inspire the same passion on either side of the aisle, nor does House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, no matter how much either might wish to take up Reid’s mantle.

Republicans, it seems, are as eager to identify a punching bag as Democrats are to find a leader—and aren’t waiting for liberals to get organized before anointing a new figurehead of their own. Politico reports that Republican strategists believe they have found their next antihero in Elizabeth Warren, whose preternatural ability to galvanize Democratic fundraising and voter turnout they hope will incite an equal and opposite reaction on the right.

For some Republicans, Warren’s strident brand of progressive politics could become a major liability for Democratic lawmakers in Trump-red states. “In the states that Trump won that Democrats are running in, I can’t imagine that she helps them. I think she hurts them,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told Politico. The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund, a G.O.P. super-PAC, hope to damage vulnerable Senate Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sherrod Brown of Ohio by tying their voting records to Warren’s through a broad advertising campaign. “Elizabeth Warren is the face of the Democratic Party,” Cory Gardner, the chairman of the N.R.S.C., said of the senator to Politico. “She's extremely popular with their base, and that's why she's leading them right now. That's why [Democrats] are voting 100 percent of the time with Elizabeth Warren.”

Democrats are skeptical of the strategy. “She has her own brand. And I think I have my own brand in my own state, so it really doesn’t hurt me,” Manchin said, adding that the G.O.P. tried a similar tactic with Obama. North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp, another Democrat who could face a tough reelection fight in 2016, said comparing her to Warren is “ridiculous”—especially based on their voting records. “They need a boogeyman, and they’re trying to turn Elizabeth into a boogeyman. And I think maybe what they should worry about more is actually doing America’s work,” Heitkamp said. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, told Politico: “It’s not going to work.”

For Republicans, however, the ad campaign isn’t just about dinging at-risk Trump-state Democrats. It’s also about damaging Warren’s future prospects, dragging her name through the dirt as her profile continues to rise. Widely seen as a top contender to take on Trump in 2020, Warren has emerged as a useful object of G.O.P. vitriol. A well-established enemy of Wall Street and a champion of the 99 percent, Warren established herself as an effective attack dog against Trump on the campaign trail when she stumped with Clinton.

It would be premature to assume Warren will run, or could win, as the next Democratic presidential nominee. While the Massachusetts senator’s popularity hovers above that of her Democratic peers Schumer and Pelosi, she still trails her progressive Vermont counterpart, Senator Bernie Sanders. More important, in a hypothetical run-off with Trump, the real-estate mogul still comes out on top. According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released last week, while Trump would lose to an unnamed Democrat by about 10 points, he would best Warren 42 to 36 percent in a head-to-head contest.

But it would also be unwise to underestimate Warren. When Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, voted to silence her when she tried to read a letter written by the late Coretta Scott King during Jeff Sessions’s confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general earlier this month, the senator’s protest became a social-media sensation. #LetLizSpeak quickly went viral and McConnell’s condemnation—“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted”—became an instant rallying cry for the emergent Trump resistance. If Warren decides to run for higher office, she already has her campaign slogan. By making her the face of the anti-Trump opposition, Republicans are making a risky bet that she won’t succeed.