The GOP plans to use Hillary Clinton's VP pick to win over Bernie Sanders supporters

Hillary Clinton's running mate is a matter of pretty intense speculation, and the Republican National Committee, like the news media, thinks Clinton will probably pick Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), or HUD Secretary Julian Castro, according to an RNC strategy memo obtained by The Huffington Post. The RNC research team, the memo says, "has been quietly building a framework to systematically dismantle the records" of Clinton's running mates for "several months," with the goal to "pre-emptively influence coverage and define top contenders ... in a manner that will peel away the most votes."

RNC Research director Raj Shah calls the VP vetting endeavor "Project Pander," and his two proposed means of peeling those votes away are to use Clinton's VP pick to "drive wedges between these top contenders and either Clinton and/or traditional Democrat constituencies, such as labor, environmentalists, and gun control advocates," and, "where applicable, frame the choice as an insult to the large, deep base of Bernie Sanders supporters who are struggling with the notion of supporting Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democrat nominee."

Each likely candidate is given a frame — Kaine is a "career politician" who's not liberal enough for "the Sanders wing" but too liberal for America; Warren is "a rich, liberal egoist" with "intensely liberal and uncompromising positions on taxes ... at odds with Middle America"; and Castro "could easily be portrayed as a John Edwards-esque pick, whereby someone with good looks but a thin resume is viewed as a novice on the national stage" — and Shah says it will use the research "to release or pitch on background prior to the nomination, and during the first hours after the announcement is made."

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RNC communications director Sean Spicer told The Huffington Post that the RNC is digging deep on each candidate, while Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said "no amount of Googling by RNC researchers" will make Donald Trump fit to be president. You can read more about the GOP's planned attacks on Clinton's likely running mate — or learn why you should opposed each candidate — in the RNC memo, or at The Huffington Post.