“Today, we find ourselves divided again – sectionalism in the country and factionalism in government has led to ever uglier examples of how our political system is failing. President Donald Trump and those who sign onto Trumpism are a clear and present danger to the Constitution and our Republic. Only defeating so polarizing a character as Trump will allow the country to heal its political and psychological wounds and allow for a new, better path forward for all Americans.”
– The Lincoln Project Web Page
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. This bold action is simply unprecedented, yet considered vital in the times.
Eight former Republican operatives – most prominent among them George Conway (married to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway); Rick Wilson, former Republican political strategist; Jennifer Horn, former New Hampshire GOP chair; and Steve Schmidt, best known for his work on Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign (where he helped select Sarah Palin as McCain’s vice president) – found the movement.
They call themselves the Lincoln Project. Named for the "Party of Lincoln," which they allege has gone so dangerously astray under President Donald Trump that they've decided to take the strategic and ad-making firepower they've trained for years on Democrats and turn it against their own.
As former Republican political strategists, the backers of the Lincoln Project believe they have a unique understanding of how Trump, and ideally Republicans more broadly, think. Their television ad buys have largely been centered on Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington, DC, making it clear that their goal is to get many of their ads before Trump himself.
Communications director Keith Edwards said the project had no plans beyond defeating Trump. Edwards explained: “We are focused [on] making sure Trump is a one-term president and ensuring Biden takes the oath of office in January. We’re not thinking of anything beyond that.”
Steve Schmidt, who worked in the George W. Bush White House, said …
“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.”
(Leslie Stahl. “The Lincoln Project: Career Republicans call on Americans to vote out President Trump.” Sixty Minutes. CBS News. October 11, 2020.)
Has the GOP Gone Astray?
The Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln. Now, it is Donald Trump's party.
It is not the party that began in 1854 as a pro-abolitionist, anti-slavery party; not the party that freed the slaves or passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution; not the party whose leaders won the Civil War, fought the Klan, and ushered in Reconstruction; not the party that welcomed Booker T. Washington to the White House or used federal troops in 1957 to integrate Little Rock High.
Instead, this Republican Party under Trump stains Lincoln’s legacy and embraces the traitors of Southern rebellion that sought to divide and destroy the Union the Founding Fathers established in 1776.
(Sophia A. Nelson. “Trump, Tulsa and the demise of Lincoln’s Republican Party.” USA Today. June 20, 2020.)
Trump has done nothing to help the GOP fend off its image as a party that, at least, tolerates bigotry. For example, during the 2016 campaign, Trump never denounced David Duke – the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who has run for the U.S. Senate three times, governor and president of the United States – all as a Republican.
Also, Trump gave Roy Moore a rousing endorsement in 2017 during a rally in Florida, near the Alabama border. The Republican National Committee poured money into the campaign too. Moore, the twice ousted former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, narrowly lost his bid for the U.S. Senate in 2017, despite credible allegations of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls as young as 14. Even with a history of making racist and homophobic remarks, Moore won 48.4% of the Republican vote.
Also consider that voters in Iowa have elected Rep. Steve King as their congressman nine times. King has made no secret of his affinity to white nationalism, and his bigoted remarks have helped to define his career.
And, believe it or not, Arthur Jones is on the Republican ballot again. Jones might not represent most Republicans. But, he definitely is a Republican, and he’s running for office as one of them. That speaks volumes. The Nazi sympathizer and Holocaust denier is making another run at the U.S. House of Representatives. He’s hoping this time around, with the political climate so divisive, voters in the mostly white working-class district will allow him to slide in.
(Dahleen Glanton. “Column: The GOP is no longer the party of Lincoln. It’s become a launching pad for bigots.” Chicago Tribune. March 11, 2020.)
This may not the image Republicans want to portray, but it is what the party looks like today. How can Republicans who don't see bigotry in President Trump's insults continue to claim Abraham Lincoln as the brand name of their party? Lincoln would not recognize his party in 2020.
Geoffrey Kabaservice, the author of the brilliant 2012 book Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party, says …
“The Republican Party that had been ceased to be sometime in the 1980s, and the modern party – the radical conservative party – not only has little or no interest in honoring its history, it is actively hostile to it.”
Greg Bailey, St. Louis attorney and correspondent for the Economist, summed it up well:
“Everything Lincoln stood for, if stripped of its nineteenth century labels, places him within the modern day Democratic Party. The man who in 1858 spoke of the 'eternal struggle' between right and wrong, the 'two principles that have stood face to face since the beginning of time … The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings,' would not be a Republican today.
“He made his choice long ago. It would not have been for a party that has tarnished and misused his name, and could more accurately call itself the party of Richard Nixon or Trent Lott or Dick Army or Tom Delay or Rush Limbaugh, but not Abraham Lincoln.”
(Greg Bailey. “If Lincoln Were Alive, He'd Be a Democrat.” The George Washington University History News Network.)
Yes, the Republican Party freed the slaves. Yet, as the party largely embraces Donald Trump, is is appealing to nostalgia for the Confederacy and stoking racial divisions, not trying to end them or get past them. The party of Lincoln has become the party of anti-intellectual, xenophobic, racist populism.
People like Steve Schmidt and Keith Edwards of the Lincoln Project recognize the ugly change. Instead of mindlessly supporting the Lost Cause of the Trump presidency – choosing party over catastrophe – the Lincoln Project aims to right the ship and plot a new course. May fresh winds fill the sails of freedom and push the party to a new destination.
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