WASHINGTON _ On Wednesday morning, Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union and a loyal ally to President Donald Trump, joined the pile-on of Republican attacks against Kamala Harris on Twitter, saying she "was a lock 'em up and throw away the key prosecutor."
Hours later, Vice President Mike Pence offered a contradictory critique in a fundraising email by labeling Harris "weak on crime."
The early conflicting messages on Joe Biden's newly minted and historic running mate reveal the latest strategic challenge for Trump's struggling reelection campaign: Whether to cast Harris in traditional GOP terms as a "radical liberal" or attempt to open up a wedge between progressives over her checkered record as a prosecutor in California.
A day after Harris' selection, Republicans are struggling with a unified approach _ much as they have wavered in settling on a single line of attack against Biden himself.
"Biden's record on crime bills and Harris' record as a prosecutor could depress some Democratic turnout," said Alex Conant, a Republican consultant who worked on Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign. "However, if Trump pushes that too far, it undermines the broader narrative that the campaign is trying to establish that they are too liberal and outside the mainstream. You would have to do it in a very targeted way, which is challenging."
At least for the moment, Trump and his allies appear to be attempting the all-the-above approach, decrying Harris as radically liberal, a "phony" without core beliefs, a critic of Biden's record on race and an adversary of Black Americans, depending on who is doing the talking.
But given that a significant pool of voters are just being introduced to Harris _ a first-term senator and the first woman of color to ever run on a major party presidential ticket _ deploying so many messages at once risks diluting the potency of any single one sticking.
While Republicans have instinctively leveled the "far-left" tag on Democrats for decades, Harris' particular political vulnerabilities are tied to a law enforcement career when she often declined to prosecute police officer-involved shootings as California attorney general and supported a law that in some cases led to arrests of parents if their children missed school. Popularity of that hard-nosed approach has waned among members of both parties over the past decade, with even Trump signing legislation intended to fund early release programs for prisoners and reduce racial disparities among nonviolent drug sentences.
Like many in her party, Harris has shifted away from those past positions as incidents of police brutality have garnered more attention from the media and activists. And in the immediate aftermath of Biden's announcement, there was little backlash to Harris across the various wings of the party.
But just as Trump campaign officials seek to tie Harris to Bernie Sanders in one breath, they can't resist hammering her as an overzealous prosecutor in the next.
During a Trump campaign livestream Tuesday evening, after communications director Tim Murtaugh noted that Harris showed openness to allowing prisoners to vote, adviser Katrina Pierson chimed in: "She should know, she put a lot of people in jail."
Murtaugh responded that Harris would need "to hide her time as a prosecutor from the anti-police left," and along with Biden, "run from their own past and be phony." In fact, the Republican National Committee blasted a press release late Tuesday with a compilation of progressives' complaints about Harris, pitched as a liberal revolt.
David McIntosh, the president of the conservative Club for Growth, which is currently running ads against Biden, said it would be up to the Trump campaign to choose which way to define Harris.
"She's at least trying to defend (defund the police) as not being that bad. Before she would've been an advocate for policing and strong law and order. With politicians you wonder, did they take both positions to try to get elected or which one do they believe in?" McIntosh said. "She's got a record that's problematic either way."
Ed Brookover, an adviser to Trump's 2016 campaign, said he would zone in on two fronts on Harris: Charging her with hypocrisy for criticizing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh over sexual assault allegations while looking past those made against Biden, and accusing her of pandering to the extreme left of the Democratic Party by evidence of her voting record and campaign statements on defunding the police and immigration enforcement.
But Brookover said it wasn't necessarily incongruous to tailor an additional message around her prosecutorial career to African American audiences.
"You can have more lines of attack than you did in the past because you have more media forms," he said. "This is targeting. I don't think there's any inconsistency in that."
Longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz advised that Republicans should focus on Harris' criticism of Biden during last year's debates, in an attempt to create a fissure between running mates. But he counseled that Trump, who repeatedly derided Harris as "nasty" on Tuesday, should stay away from the attacks on Biden's No. 2 altogether, a scenario that seemed unlikely given the president's eagerness for political combat.
"I would tell the president to be silent and I would have other Republicans holding her accountable," Luntz said. "Because he's already having trouble with female voters. ... Attacking her would make it potentially worse."
Before the announcement of Harris, there was some indication the Trump campaign and its allies had begun to turn its focus to how Biden would raise taxes. That was the theme of new TV ads in North Carolina and Wisconsin by America First Action, the pro-Trump super PAC. The president also started touting potential cuts to payroll and capital gains taxes.
Harris has scrambled those plans for the moment. And though she'll largely be the center of the political universe at least through next week's Democratic National Convention, some Republicans believe her significance will ultimately recede in the fall.
"The pick of the vice president is always more important the day before it's made than the day after," said Brookover.
