XPost: rec.sport.tennis, alt.fraud

As the Trump presidency recedes into history and while Trumpism
as a political force is in abeyance between elections, it is
urgent for his opponents to have an honest reckoning with their
own past. Anti-Trump forces threw their whole might into
defeating him and the fact of victory doesn’t mean that every
tactic was effective or necessary. Indeed, some of the anti-
Trump manifestations, like the cults that grew around former FBI
director James Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller, seem
especially dubious and counterproductive.

The hopes pinned on such stalwart establishment figures to bring
down Trump now seem like pipe dreams, as the focus on potential
Russian collusion yielded at best partial evidence and almost no
real political results. In the end, Trump was defeated in the
normal way most political figures are, by his opponents’
stitching together a larger political coalition and winning at
the ballot box.

Even in the realm of electoral politics, there were some dubious
bets. Many Democrats fantasized about the potential of Never
Trump Republicans to break Trump’s hold on the GOP. Over the
last five years, erstwhile Republicans like David Frum, Charles
Sykes, and William Kristol have won a surprising new audience
among liberals eager to hear their anti-Trump message.

The pitch the Never Trump Republicans made was often based on a
compelling redemption narrative. They had worked inside the GOP
and knew all its dirty tricks. Now, like Dr. Frankenstein, they
saw the evil they had created and were committed to destroying
it. Since they understood the monster better than anyone, they
could be trusted to lead the charge.

That was the argument the Lincoln Project, a political action
committee formed in late 2019, made to donors. The group was
founded by four veterans of Republican politics: Steve Schmidt,
John Weaver, Reed Galen, and Rick Wilson. They were all men with
a reputation for political hardball. Wilson, for example,
created the infamous 2002 ad accusing Democratic Senator Max
Cleland, a veteran who had lost his legs and an arm during the
Vietnam War, of being soft on terrorism.

Writing in Mashable in November 2020, shortly before the
presidential election, Rebecca Ruiz asserted,

The Lincoln Project is arguably a liberal’s dream. It’s a once-
in-a-lifetime reversal of fortunes. Accustomed to being at the
mercy of Republican operatives, liberals now get to watch them
use those same dreaded tactics in an effort to elect a Democrat
president. Even better, their team of brawlers insists on aiming
the punches directly at the president and those who push his
agenda, which Democrats haven’t done with the same consistent
fearlessness.

The Lincoln Project released a slew of anti-Trump attack ads,
many just for social media, although some also aired on
television. These ads were notably personal, sometimes focusing
on Trump’s verbal slips, with suggestions that he was suffering
from impaired mental health. They certainly had the ability to
get under Trump’s skin, leading the former president to rail
against the group as “LOSERS” and “RINO Republicans.”

Trump perhaps felt threatened by a group that used his own
tactics. If the Lincoln Project was politically anti-Trump, it
was also stylistically Trumpian. Fighting fire with fire made
sense given the emergency of the Trump era.

Countless liberals bought the Lincoln Project’s line, spreading
its message on Twitter and donating profusely. In a little over
a year, it collected an astonishing $87 million in donations.

Much of that money was wasted. As it turns out, the Lincoln
Project was Trumpian not just in using harsh rhetoric but also
in being a con game. An extensive report published on Monday by
The New York Times makes clear that the organization was run by
mountebanks of a rare order.

According to the newspaper, “The behind-the-scenes moves by the
four original founders showed that whatever their political
goals, they were also privately taking steps to make money from
the earliest stages, and wanted to limit the number of people
who would share in the spoils. Over time, the Lincoln Project
directed about $27 million—nearly a third of its total fund-
raising—to Mr. Galen’s consulting firm, from which the four men
were paid, according to people familiar with the arrangement.”

That $27 million was only the beginning of the elaborate shell
game. The Lincoln Project also had intimate financial ties with
the contractors it paid money to. Reed Galen collected a
commission on the $13.3 million the Lincoln Project paid to one
ad maker. The governance of the organization was an ethical
disaster, with contractors who got paid also getting seats on
the board of directors. The nominal management of the
organization was often kept in the dark about the financial
dealings of the four founders.

Beyond the self-dealing, the Lincoln Project covered up serious
sexual harassment allegations against one of the founders, John
Weaver. The New York Times spoke “to more than 25 people who
received harassing messages, including one person who was 14
when Mr. Weaver first contacted him.” People at the Lincoln
Project knew about some of these allegations, although not the
one about the 14-year-old, as early as January 2020.

Jennifer Horn, a New Hampshire Republican who was listed as one
of the cofounders of the Lincoln Project even though she was
excluded from decision making, told the Times, “When I spoke to
one of the founders to raise my objections and concerns, I was
yelled at, demeaned and lied to.”

All of this is sordid enough. But some might be tempted to
forgive the Lincoln Project if its efforts had in fact helped
defeat Trump. But there is no evidence that they did. As The
Washington Post reported in an election postmortem, “Despite
pleas by ‘Never Trump’ voices, the president secured a larger
share of Republican voters nationally, 94 percent in 2020, than
four years ago, when he won 88 percent and third-party
candidates received more support.”

An online panel conducted by Civis Analytics evaluated the
effective of a range of anti-Trump ads. As The Daily Poster
reported in November, “In the document’s review of 65 Democratic-
aligned ads on air as of election day, the Lincoln Project’s two
tested ads ranked 52nd and 53rd for persuading voters to support
Biden.” Other Lincoln Project ads tested as not just ineffective
but as positively counterproductive: They persuaded viewers to
vote for Trump.

The ineffectiveness of the ads should be no surprise. Twenty
twenty was a polarizing election, with voters of both parties
coming out in droves along starkly partisan lines. In that
environment, the Lincoln Project made the wrong arguments to the
wrong voters. Beyond that, there’s little reason to think that
lifelong Republican consultants were really interested in
electing a Democratic president. The Lincoln Project wasn’t a
failed political action committee but a successful scam.

In 1973, as he was sworn in as president, Gerald Ford said, “I
am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent
as Mr. Lincoln’s.” Echoing these words, we can say that despite
their lofty evocation of the Great Emancipator, these
consultants were frauds, not Lincolns.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/lincoln-project-trump-
fraud/

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