The Lincoln Project understands that Trump's enablers must pay a price
“The once-mocked ‘Never Trump’ movement becomes a sudden campaign force”
— Post headline, July 11
If you want any more evidence of the validity of that conclusion, look no further than the frenzied attacks on the Lincoln Project, a political action committee formed last year by four Republicans (George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson) disenchanted with President Trump. With its razor-sharp videos, the Lincoln Project has drawn blood — and counterattacks mainly from the Trumpified right but also, surprisingly, from a section of the self-defeating left. Even Trump has inveighed against the Lincoln Project, in typically understated fashion, as “LOSERS” who are “a disgrace to Honest Abe.”
The most common charge is that, as Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel put it, the organization has a “record of grift” and “profiting off attacking President Trump.” This charge has been faithfully repeated with no evidence by the lap dog conservative press, e.g., the National Review and Ben Shapiro.
This is pretty rich coming from Trump’s acolytes, since there is no more glaring example of grift in our politics than the Trump campaign and the Trump White House. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Trump campaign and affiliated committees have spent $22 million at Trump properties since he entered politics in 2015. Now we learn that Trump directed the U.S. ambassador to Britain to ask the British government to steer the British Open to his golf resort in Scotland.
Now that’s corruption. What the Lincoln Project is doing is simply politics as usual. There is no reason to believe, the Daily Beast writes, that “Lincoln Project executives are simply pocketing the money that’s channeled through their political consulting firms.” If those working on the Lincoln Project are compensated, well, they deserve it. They’re turning out brilliant videos at a relentless pace that puts most political organizations to shame.
The attacks on the Lincoln Project’s finances are a thinly disguised attack on its tactics — which are to attack Trump and the GOP from a perspective likely to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters. Right-wingers are especially perturbed that the group has targeted vulnerable Republican senators. How dare they?!? “The Lincoln Project has made itself a Democratic Party organization,” screams a headline in the Washington Examiner. This would seem to refute a charge heard from the far left — namely that the group is a bunch of unrepentant warmongers who haven’t really broken with the GOP.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/22/lincoln-project-is-trying-save-republican-party-itself/
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