(July 7) There are honorable Never Trump Republicans who object to the current president but without abandoning their own principles.
And then there’s the Lincoln Project. This group is neither honorable nor Republican. Its idea of opposing Trump is to scorch the earth not just against the president, but against numerous Republican Senate candidates as well. That’s not principle — it’s a temper tantrum.
Like most temper tantrums, it is both counterproductive and destructive.
The McClatchy news organization reports that the Lincoln Project is among the purportedly Republican or conservative groups or individuals working hard to flip the Senate from Republican control to a Democratic majority. It is spending more than six figures per race for advertising against incumbent Republicans Martha McSally in Arizona, Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Joni Ernst in Iowa, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.
“The only way to make sure that Trumpism doesn’t continue to rule the Republican Party for years to come,” said the Lincoln Project’s Jennifer Horn, a former New Hampshire Republican state chairwoman, “is to make sure that we defeat not only the president but those people who have enabled him.”
And former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois is leading a similar effort that will work to defeat Republican Senate candidates in battleground states across the country.
In a word, these efforts are asinine.
Granted, most Republican senators and most GOP challengers have acted like Trump’s lackeys. Most have lacked both courage and conviction and, yes, “enabled” his abuses of form and function. Still, the world doesn’t begin and end with Trump. The billionaire bully will not be here forever, and he may well not even be in the Oval Office beyond January. Either way, a Democratic Senate would be terrible in the view of any conservative….
[The full column is at this link.]
