In a tweet on Friday, President Donald Trump laid out the likely Republican messaging strategy to hold on to Congress in this fall’s midterm elections: warn voters that Nancy Pelosi, the leading Democrat in the House, is going to raise their taxes if her party takes control of the chamber. Or in Trump’s words:

Nancy Pelosi is going absolutely crazy about the big Tax Cuts given to the American People by the Republicans...got not one Democrat Vote! Here’s a choice. They want to end them and raise your taxes substantially. Republicans are working on making them permanent and more cuts! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 20, 2018

While Trump is often accused of interjecting a new level of acrimony in American politics, his attack on Pelosi is perfectly in keeping with the Republican mainstream. Pelosi has been a major GOP target ever since she became House Minority Leader in 2003, and the onslaught is only increasing in intensity. And with both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton retired from public life, Pelosi has become Republicans’ scapegoat of choice, the Democratic politician most likely to be used in attack ads designed to rile up the conservative faithful.

“Nancy Pelosi has long been a favorite target of GOP attack ads,” USA Today reported recently. “But Republicans seem to be taking it to another level in this election cycle.” 34 percent of Republican ads in House races this year mentioned Pelosi, up from 13 percent from the 2014 midterm cycle. In some races, this is the dominant message: In the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District last month, 58 percent of Republican ads were anti-Pelosi.

Republicans became obsessed with Pelosi the moment she ascended as a national figure. In 2003, Los Angeles Times observed that Republicans were “eager to attack Pelosi as a loopy San Francisco liberal and exploit her city’s reputation as the odd-sock drawer of America. Within days, her face—garish and twisted—showed up in an attack ad slamming the Democrat in a Louisiana House race. (He won anyway.) She surfaced as Miss America, complete with tiara, in a spoof on Rush Limbaugh’s Web site.”



The relentless demonization of Pelosi, who has reached the highest office of any female politician in American history, is partly fueled by—and an appeal to—sexism. “I think they need to get a new game book,” Representative Joseph Crowley, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said last month of Republicans. “The attempts to use Nancy Pelosi, it’s failing them at this point. And I think, quite frankly, it’s sexist.”