Courageous Conservatives PAC, a small group that mostly spent the 2016 campaign supporting the presidential bid of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), has purchased $11,000 of ad time in the D.C. area to support Donald Trump's choice of Stephen K. Bannon for White House strategist.

“Bannon's not like the Bush crowd,” promises a narrator, in a spot that will run on cable stations for the next week. “Bannon likes beating the left.”

The ad grew out of anger at Democrats who have attacked Bannon's support of the “alt-right” and management of right-wing Breitbart News since Trump's transition team announced his new role. “There are all these attacks on Bannon, which are completely unfounded — just silly attacks you could make against anyone,” said Rick Shaftan, the PAC's spokesman. “So we're making the case that the president should make his own picks. This is a new president with a new way of doing things.”

A year ago, Shaftan and the PAC didn't see Trump that way. Courageous Conservatives PAC — its name taken from a common Cruz phrase — debuted with spots that attacked Trump as a pawn of big money and Cruz as a true reformer.

“This PAC was skeptical of Trump, but the message is: ‘This guy's doing what he said what he was going to do,’ ” said Shaftan. “People should tweet the president and say, ‘We like what we're seeing.’ Compare this to what we saw in the last Republican administration. People voted not just for change from Obama, but change from Bush.”