The Lincoln Project and The Hypocrisy of The Never-Trump Republicans

Donald Trump has lost the 2020 election to Joseph Biden by 74 electoral votes. Face it, his “voter fraud” lawsuit is unfounded in evidence and a recount sure isn’t going to magically flip the wide margin of votes between both candidates. Understandably so, many people are celebrating his defeat, and why not? This is the man who willingly did and does nothing to prevent or slow the spread of coronavirus in his country, the man who has not sent any stimulus relief bills to families and workers in several months while bailing out billionaires, the man that cut back any little reform that this conservative country has been able to pass (ACA, Paris Accord). The list goes on, but I digress. Mainstream outlets like Newsweek, CNN, and others have praised Project Lincoln, a super PAC consisting of Republicans that are against Trump and have deemed its 67-million-dollar campaign as a fundamental reason why Joe Biden won the election. However, is this fact true? And are its founders to be trusted?

As of right now, Donald Trump holds 73 million votes in the 2020 election, a 116% increase from the 62 million votes he gained in the 2016 elections. It has also been reported in a Fox News surveys that Donald Trump had the support of 91% of Republicans. So, on what were those millions spent? Intentional or not, most Lincoln Project billboards were mostly placed in urban centers, like the one in New York that targeted Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Furthermore, the campaign spread most of its ads through sites like Twitter.com, which have been shown to possess a democrat majority. This means that this campaign appealed to a voter base that was already inclined towards voting for Joe Biden rather than appealing towards conservatives in more rural places; the ones that tend to be more Republican.

Regarding the founders of this organization, just because they don’t like Trump doesn’t mean that they also don’t support his viewpoints or beliefs. After all, Never-Trump Republicans are still Republicans. For example, Lincoln Project editor Ben Howe had recently been fired due to controversies after tweets filled with misogyny and claims of wishing to shoot Michael Brown, an African American teenager that had been murdered by a white Ferguson police officer. There’s also Rick Wilson, who’s posted pictures of his yacht while vicariously showing a cooler he had that showed the Confederate flag, a symbol among many racist Americans. And, last but not least, there’s Steve Schmidt, the man who’s worked as a campaign strategist for George W. Bush—you know, the infamous warmonger—and John McCain—who launched one of the most racist campaigns against Obama in the 2008 election.

With all this at hand, it’s safe to say that neoliberals and progressives have been duped. They donated money to an organization that arguably sabotaged the chances of Joe Biden winning the election. It’s this same naivety that can be applied towards positive attitudes towards Joe Biden as president because sure, we may have gotten rid of a fascist in office, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can all go “back to brunch”, now that all of our problems have gone away. No, it’s not like that at all. We have to learn how Trump got into power in the first place and force corporate democrats like Biden to pass more progressive reforms to prevent anything like the former four-year presidency.