to cease operations, transferring its as-
sets to another property he owned, the
Washington &taminer. Kristol assem-
bled a small new team to run a Never
Trumper Web site, called the Bulwark,
which launched a month later. Long-
well, with no previous experience in the
media bwin~s, became its publisher.
Jam~ Murdoch was not able to save
the Standard, but Kristol introduced
Longwell to Murdoch's wife, Kathryn.
and she became a major, six-figure
donor to Republicans for the Rule of
Law. Kathryn Murdoch told me, "Sarah
gives me hope that there is going to be
a post-Trump Republican Party that is
principled and focussed on getting
things done."Murdoch, who described
herself as an independent, added, "Un-
fortunatdy, one of the most :frustrating
things right now is there's a big differ-
ence between the way Republican lead-
ers speak behind closed doors and the
way they speak in public."
Longwell and Kristo! spent much of
2018 and the first half of 2019 trying to
recruit a Republican to run against
Trump in the upcoming primaries. At
first, Longwell hoped for a big-name
candidate: "I was, like, 'Maybe Mitt
Romney'll do it, maybe Condoleezza
Rice will do it.' And I subsequently re-
ali7.Cd that there really was a very nar-
row universe of poople who were going
to legitimately consider it. At the end
of the day, none of them saw a path."
John Kasich, the former Ohio governor,
who ran against Trump in 2016, was in-
~ but even longtime financial sup-
porters wouldn't back him. Longwell's
"personal favorite"was Larry Hogan, the
governor of Maryland, whose father had
been the first Republican member of the
House Judiciary Committee to call for
Richard Nixon's impeachment. But, last
spring, Hogan said that he wouldn't
mount a "suicide mission" against the
President. "Nobody wanted to cross this
guy," Longwell recalled. "This Ameri-
can Life" compared her effort to that of
the workers who tried to stop the mdt-
down at Chernobyl. And yet, Longwdl
noted, "it was easier to get three guys to
go into Chernobyl than it was to get
somebody to run against Trump."
By the summer of 2019, not even the
Log Cabin Republicans wanted to op-
pose Trump anymore. Longwell .found
that her activism against the President
was at odds with the majority of the
board, and in August she resigned as
chair.& soon as she did, the board voted
to preemptively endorse Trump fur 2020.
A half-dozen other board members ul-
timately quit in the rift over Trump, as
did the group's fust female executive di-
rector. Jennifer Hom, the former chair
of the New Hampshire Republican
Party, who had been recruited to the
board by Longwell, told me, "We just
could not remain."B
ythis point, Longwell had become
all too .familiar with what she often
called "the soft bigotry of low expecta-
tions": the assumption that her fellow-
Republicans would give in to Trump,
whatever his latest outrage, and yet es-
cape censure, since their capitulation
was now merely the expected outcome.
The impeachment drama, ignited by
the disclosure, in September, of Trump's
fateful call to the Ukrainian President,
seemed as if it would provide yet more
proof of this frustrating new Washing-
ton reality.
Despite the revelations about Trump's
scheme to withhold U.S. military aid to
Ukraine as he demanded politically
beneficial investigations into Biden,
Longwcll lmcw that impeachment was
almost cerniliJ. to end with an acquittalin the Republican-controlled Senate.
There were not twenty Republican votes
to convict, and likely never would be.
Still, on September 30th, less than a
week after the House inquiry ~.she
wrote an opinion piece for NBC com-
paring the moment to Watergate, titled
"Republicans Who Back Impeachment
Can Save the Country--and the GOP."
Tut day, she got an e-mail from Rick
Berman,her boss, asking where she stood
on impeachment. She replied that it was
time for them to 1:2lk.
They met in his sunny comer office,
and Berman made it clear that Long-
well would haw: to choose between sup-
porting Trump's impeachment and stay-
ing on at his company. Berman had
allowed her to devote increasing time to
anti-Trump causes during the previous
few years, to the point of even raising
money and working to recruit a primary
candidate against him. But Berman could
not abide her using his firm to run a
aunpaign to remove a President of their
party. "My red line was impeachment,"
he told me. They agreed that by the end
of the year she would leave Berman's
company and start her own political. con-
sulting firm, Longwell Partners.
Longwell said that her views had
"changed a lot" since she :first began
working with Berman, but she still\II~
•F()1' health and safety reasons, we'll he transitioning to cyber crime. "