Old and busted: Republicans pounce®! New hotness: Drooling, or something, according to Politico’s Playbook. The new innovation on the pouncing/seizing front comes as Cori Bush handed Republicans a gift in an interview with CBS News. Confronted with her hiring of private security while arguing to defund the police for everyone else, Bush argued that she’s too important to have to deal with relaxed law enforcement.

Of course, the story here isn’t Bush’s demolition of the distancing Democrats have tried to erect between themselves and police defunders and abolitionists. It’s the fact that Republicans noticed it:

Republicans are salivating over a new interview in which Rep. CORI BUSH (D-Mo.) defended spending $70k on private security for herself as a member of Congress — while also saying Democrats should defund the police.

“I’m going to make sure I have security,” Bush said in a CBSN interview blowing up on Twitter. “I get to be here to do the work, so suck it up — and defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police.”

Our sources tell us that the NRCC has already started weaving Bush’s interview into their attack ads on frontline House Democrats. As part of the effort, they released a new video juxtaposing the rise in crime nationwide with Bush’s comments, which they’ll be blasting out this afternoon. “Vote them out. November 8, 2022,” the video reads at the end.

Fox’s Brit Hume had a succinct — and perfect — response to the promo tweet from Politico:

They often “salivate” before they “pounce.” https://t.co/9dzoBTQ92b

— Brit Hume (@brithume) August 5, 2021

Allahpundit could see this coming a mile off, even if Politico couldn’t (or pretends not to have):

Congratulations to GOP candidates and their ad teams on being gifted with this clip, part of the Squad’s ongoing mission to purify their party ideologically by making sure all centrist Democrats in the caucus are ultimately replaced by Republicans.

Jonah Goldberg’s take is even more on the money:

Good Lord. It's almost like she's a deep cover agent for the NRCC. https://t.co/7ckZ3Ecagt

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) August 5, 2021

And with that said, here’s the NRCC’s ad, which is if anything a bit generic — but clearly designed for a TV campaign:

Even its generic quality plays in the NRCC’s favor, of course. They will run this ad in every competitive district in the US next fall. They’ll likely cut district-specific versions of this for their top-focus contests too, but this will play anywhere and everywhere … because the issue plays well for the GOP in almost every corner of the US.

And that’s not considering what other gifts Bush and the Squad may give the NRCC over the next fifteen months, too. The question here shouldn’t be whether Republicans are salivating — it should be whether Democrats have the cold sweats over the midterms.