C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 3 , 2020
decision ultimately driven by pol-
itics. But no, he’s not renouncing
the Republican Party as he knew
it.
“I think a good sign of being an
idiot in life is believing that all
virtue is vested in one of these
political parties and all evil in the
other,” he says. He rejects those
who say he should be ashamed of
the past: “The necessity for an act
of atonement against conviction
is self-righteous and smug at a
level that beggars my ability to
describe it in the English lan-
guage. And I would suggest that
they’re part of the problem, not so
much part of the solution.”O
ne question, of course, is
whether the Lincoln Project
ads are preaching to the
choir — Democrats and other
Never Trumpers — or if they have
the ability to sway voters who
identify as Republicans.
Sarah Longwell, founder of Re-
publican Voters Against Trump,
has taken a different tack. Her
group has collected hundreds of
testimonials from 2016 Trump vot-
ers who are planning to vote for
Biden in 2020 and is using the $13
million it has raised — a droplet in
the sea of campaign spending — to
air them in swing states.
Her research shows that whatback in politics is time,” says
Sykes. “Every day that goes by
that Donald Trump is off his
game or distracted is a win. He
can’t fix that. He can’t go back
and get it. What they found is that
a single video can take the presi-
dent of the United States off track
for a day or more and you see it
play out.”
But you would be mistaken in
believing the Lincoln Project was
created to atone for past sins. Yes,
there have been plenty of Repub-
licans who have asked if their
efforts over the past decades
made a Trump presidency possi-
ble. What part did they play?
What did they miss, ignore or
tolerate? Republican consultant
Stuart Stevens, author of the new
book “It Was All a Lie: How the
Republican Party Became Donald
Trump,” believes the president is
“a natural product of the seeds of
race, self-deception, and anger
that became the essence of the
Republican Party” over the past
50 years. “Trump isn’t an aberra-
tion of the Republican Party; he is
the Republican Party in a purified
form.”
But Schmidt, who it’s fair to say
is disgusted by Trump, is unapol-
ogetic about his life’s work. Yes,
he urged McCain to pick Sarah
Palin as his running mate, aJABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Trump arrives to speak during a “Keep America Great Rally” at the Southern New Hampshire University Arena on Aug. 15, 2019, in Manchester, N.H.“This partisan organization,
made up of elitists who favor the
Swamp, are threatened by this
President and his bold leadership
to put America first.”
The president, of course, has
made it clear he is NOT HAPPY
with the group. He tweeted that
the “so-called Lincoln Project is a
disgrace to Honest Abe. I don’t
know what Kellyanne did to her
deranged loser of a husband,
Moonface, but it must have been
really bad.” He proceeded to dis-
miss the founders — there are
several of them — as “all LOS-
ERS.”
Their history working for Re-
publican candidates is anathema
to some progressives; Trump’s
base is similarly incensed by what
they see as a betrayal to the
president. Stephen Colbert’s
“Late Show” cartoon “Tooning
Out the News” skewered Wilson’s
résumé and the group’s finances.
Trump’s campaign and conser-
vatives have aggressively at-
tacked the Lincoln Project as a
moneymaker for the founders:
Republican National Committee
Chair Ronna McDaniel criticized
it for “profiting off attacking Pres-
ident Trump.” In the last quarter,
the group raised almost $17 mil-
lion, which is targeted for ex-
panded media buys. Are the
founders getting rich? No, they
say, at least no more than any
other high-profile campaign op-
eration. It’s politics as usual, or as
close as this year comes to it.
“As far as I can tell, and I’m not
part of this, they’re not doing
anything different than any other
political action committee,” says
Sykes. “And yet it’s fascinating to
me the amount of energy that is
being spent to discredit them,
which again, I think is a credit to
how effective they are. They have
touched an incredible nerve out
there.”
Now the group has expanded
its operations to Senate races
around the country — targeting
Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Thom
Tillis and Lindsey O. Graham —
to drum out Republican enablers.
The group has also pledged to
pour money into vote-by-mail
education and assistance.
“You can’t take your foot off the
gas, but he’s going to lose and he’s
going to lose big,” says Conway.
“The reason why I’m confident of
that is not because of the polls,
but because of his essential na-
ture, his self-destructive nature.
He doesn’t know how to handle
the current situation. He can’t lie
his way out of it anymore. And if
we keep the pressure on, keep
doing what we’re doing, he’s go-
ing to dig himself deeper.”
[email protected]people found persuasive was real
voices, uncut, not produced ads.
She’s specifically targeting past
Trump supporters (especially
suburban women) with voices
from people in the same state.
What’s she hearing? Things
like, “I voted for Trump in 2016
and I cried and I felt I needed to
take a shower” or “I’ve been
watching him since I voted for
him and I just can’t stand how
divisive he is.”
Longwell, a lifelong Republi-
can, admits she believed her par-
ty would stand up to Trump’s
worst instincts. And she was
wrong.
“There became this myth
about Trump that his base is so
strong and locked in and they
loved him,” she says. “I knew that
wasn’t true and it wasn’t true for
a long time, and that there were a
lot of people out there that could
be persuaded if the Democrat
wasn’t objectionable to them. I
knew that Bernie Sanders was
never going to fly with these
people, but Joe Biden had always
surfaced as somebody in our re-
search that if it was him, there
was a bunch of people who could
be persuaded to vote for him.”
This approach is not a knock
on the Lincoln Project, Longwell
says — ultimately, they’re all
working for the same goal.
And that goal, says conserva-
tive commentator Rick Tyler,
means alliances with ideological
opponents are important in the
short term — especially with vot-
ers who feel left behind by today’s
Republican Party. “There’s no
philosophy,” he says. “There’s no
belief. There’s no core. It’s just
about Trump and his popularity.”
The value of the Lincoln Project is
that it keeps reminding voters of
all persuasions why Trump
shouldn’t be reelected.
“Right now you’ve got to kill
the alligator closest to the boat,
the one that’s going to kill you,
and that is Donald Trump,” says
Tyler. “Now, we can all view Joe
Biden as another alligator or
Nancy Pelosi as an alligator. I
think they’re little alligators and
they’re a quarter mile down the
river. You don’t have to worry
about them at all. But there’s this
giant alligator who’s going to eat
the boat.”T
he White House, predictably,
takes exception with this
assessment.
“The so-called Lincoln Project
is an absolute slap in the face to
the legacy of our 16th President
and the more than 62 million
forgotten men and women” who
vote d for Trump, says White
House spokesman Judd Deere.The three didn’t know each
other well before December,
when they founded the group —
named after the president who
“led the United States through its
bloodiest, most divisive and most
decisive period of our history” —
but bonded over their disillusion-
ment with Trump. Conway and
Wilson were both deeply influ-
enced by the book “Trump on the
Couch,” by psychiatrist Justin A.
Frank.
“Trump is a narcissist and he
cannot help but react to threats to
his delicate psyche,” explains
Conway. “He is a very sensitive,
weak human being who cannot
take criticism.” The other factor,
he adds, is that “he can’t think
ahead. He merely reacts to things.
And what we do is take advantage
of both of those psychological
defects.”
What that means in practical
terms is that the Lincoln Project
ads are specifically designed to
trigger the president. Whenever
Trump is reacting to a Lincoln
Project ad, he’s talking about
things he shouldn’t be talking
about. He’s explaining why he
inched down the ramp at the U.S.
Military Academy, or drank water
with two hands. He’s shooting off
a tweet about the “Mourning in
America” ad, thereby raising mil-
lions of dollars... for the Lincoln
Project.
The group approaches its task
with a military precision, with a
few dozen staffers churning out
new videos overnight. “We don’t
mess around,” says Wilson. “It’s
this concept of moving faster
than your enemy’s ability to de-
cide to act in a battle.”
You can call it trolling, and it is:
The Lincoln Project buys ad time
in Washington and Bedminster
for an audience of one. “He is a
creature who exists only on tele-
vision, the Chauncey Gardiner of
our time,” says Wilson, evoking
the movie “Being There.” “The
fact that we’re able to use his
mental infirmity and addiction to
television to freeze him and ma-
nipulate him serves a broader
purpose for the overall campaign
in terms of taking him off mes-
sage, disorganizing and disori-
enting him.”
All this is designed to help
Biden, whom they endorsed in a
Washington Post op-ed in April.
Their unique skill is talking to
conservatives in a way that Demo-
crats can’t, with techniques that
they’ve honed over many Republi-
can campaigns. They’re also tar-
geting “soft” Republicans who
may be persuadable — such as
those who voted for Barack
Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016.
“The one thing you can’t getThe “Mourning in America” ad
attacks Trump’s mismanagement
of the coronavirus outbreak.
“#TrumpIsNotWell” questions his
mental and physical fitness.
“Bounty” asks why Trump won’t
confront Vladimir Putin about
U.S. intelligence reports that Rus-
sia offered bounties for the killing
of American soldiers in Afghani-
stan.
The ads are slick, scathing and
more shocking than anything Joe
Biden’s official campaign has pro-
duced. The newest release, “Wake
Up,” is a dark comic satire about a
coma victim hearing about
Trump’s last three years. “Repub-
licans, we need to wake up. This
guy was in a coma. What’s your
excuse?”
“Donald Trump is so complete-
ly at odds with every institution
in America and so completely at
odds with anything that the Re-
publican Party allegedly stood
for: the rule of law, constitutional
fealty, institutions, norms, tradi-
tions, all of those things are out
the window,” says Rick Wilson, a
co-founder of the group. “So
you’re either going to make a
choice between Trump or this
country. We made the choice for
the country, even if it doesn’t
immediately seem to fit with all
of our ideological or political
priors.”
Pick your motto: Politics
makes strange bedfellows. The
enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Desperate times call for desper-
ate measures.
“I’ll be really honest with you:
My time horizon is the election,”
says Charlie Sykes, a conservative
political commentator who is not
part of the Lincoln Project but
wants to see Trump voted out. “I
feel like the house is burning. I
want to put out the fire. I’m going
to worry about the redecorating
later.”T
hree of the Lincoln Project
founders — Wilson, Steve
Schmidt and George T.
Conway III — sat down last week
to talk about their motives and
their methodology. Wilson and
Schmidt are longtime hired guns
for Republican candidates
(George W. Bush, John McCain
and many more); Conway, a l aw-
yer and spouse of presidential
adviser Kellyanne Conway, has
had a long career representing
Republican clients.
Schmidt is the firebrand, furi-
ous and effusive. Wilson is
shrewd and sly. And Conway is
fiercely protective of the Consti-
tution, which he feels Trump has
repeatedly violated.LINCOLN PROJECRT FROM C1For the Lincoln Project, a plan to
trigger Trump and drive him out
“You’re either going to make a choice
between Trump or this country.
We made the choice for the country.”
Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project“This partisan organization, made up of
elitists who favor the Swamp, are
threatened by this President and his bold
leadership to put America first.”
Judd Deere, White House spokesman, on the Lincoln Project“My time horizon is the election. I feel like
the house is burning. I want to put out
the fire. I’m going to worry about
the redecorating later.”
Charlie Sykes, a conservative political commentator
who wants Trump to be voted out