Named for the “Party of Lincoln”, they believe that the US under Donald Trump has gone so dangerously astray that they have decided to take the strategic and ad-making firepower they have used against the democrats for years, to defeat their own.
In Trump’s America, nothing is really normal. When the country remains the worst-affected across the globe by the pandemic, and the President has himself contracted the virus, the US is far away from normalcy. But one of the most abnormal thing in the US right now is that a group of lifelong Republicans — political strategists for Republican candidates for the last 30 years — have banded together to mount a rogue offensive aimed at defeating the sitting president of their own party.
They have named it “The Lincoln Project”. Named for the “Party of Lincoln”, they believe that the US under Donald Trump has gone so dangerously astray that they have decided to take the strategic and ad-making firepower they have used against the democrats for years, to defeat their own.
Some of the most gut-punching, bare-knuckled and widely viewed Anti-Trump ads haven’t come from democrats or Biden campaign. They’ve come from the Lincoln Project, trying to convince fellow Republicans.
In one such ad, Former U.S Navy SEAL Dr. Dan Barkhuff calls the US President “coward”. He says, “I’m a pro-life, gun-owning combat veteran”, targeting the particular set of Republican Trump supporters.
In another ad on Dr Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, the narrated gives a backdrop of how important Dr Fauci’s role has been for the US in the last few decades, hitting out at Trump for discrediting the renowned expert over his Covid-19 remarks.
The ad says “Trump failed America”, adding that to cover up his failure, he’s doing what he does best- attack and blame.
The ad also asks voters who do they trust more, “Donald the dope” or “the doctor”?
These advertisements have caught the attention of voters by the quirky remarks on the US President, loaded with sharp criticism of Trump and his administration.
But who is behind “The Lincoln Project”?
A longtime Republican strategist, Steve Schmidt, who worked in the George W. Bush White House and ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, is one of the founders of the Lincoln Project.
“We all had a conviction that there are millions of Republicans who look at this debacle and reject it. And what we thought we could do is talk to those voters in the language and the iconography that they understand, connect with them, and persuade them, many of them, to vote for the Democratic nominee for the first time in their lives,” Schmidt says.
The Lincoln Project team, working from their homes across the country, likes nautical analogies. They call themselves a pirate ship, with Reed Galen helping chart their course.
Reed Galen, a columnist, republican strategist and former press secretary to Vice President Dan Quayle, says they have endorsed Joe Biden.
“Republicans can call us, you know, betrayers of the faith all they want. We go– we sleep well at night,” says Galen.
“Every time Donald Trump loses his mind and throws things at the wall because a Lincoln Project ad is up, that takes the whole campaign off track. There’s one thing you never get back in a campaign. That’s a lost day,” Rick Wilson, a former member of the Republican Party. He has produced televised political commercials for governors, U.S. Senate candidates, Super PACs, and corporations.
Another Member of the Lincoln Project, Mike Madrid, thinks the real dividing line in the Republican Party is between college-educated and non-college-educated voters. And what they are seeing is, when Donald Trump starts to push messages like law and order or defends, the Confederate flags and Confederate monuments, he does seem to be able to coalesce a small number of non-college-educated workers in the Rust Belt states. But at the same time, he’s pushing white, college-educated workers in the Sun Belt states out of his column.
The Lincoln Project does not only target the US president, but also the Republican senators, attacking them brutally on their fealty to President Trump.
However, the members of the project accept that Donald Trump can win again.
“Of course he could. Donald Trump could win. This is why, you know, we don’t sleep a lot, and why we’re constantly pushing to expand our envelope because you can’t take chances with Donald Trump. We’re not outta this fight till the fight is done,” says Rick Wilson.
Though it will be too early to predict how much impact the Lincoln Project can have on the US Presidential Election, it is surely turning out to be a headache for the US President.
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