Place your money on the anti-Trump Lincoln Project to return America to majority rule

Behind every major run for political office, especially campaigns for president, Congress and governor, is a political consultant responsible for the overall strategy of the campaign, especially those dreaded commercials flooding the airwaves during the election season. They can have an enormous impact on the outcome — even the negative commercials that voters love to hate, because polling shows over and over that they influence voters in the decisions they make at the polls.

One of the most famous commercials that helped determine an election result was one Sen. Mitch McConnell used on the incumbent he was challenging in McConnell’s first run for the U.S. Senate. It showed bloodhounds leading their masters through Kentucky airports searching for Sen. Dee Huddleston, someone McConnell accused of missing key votes and not returning to the state regularly. The mastermind behind that commercial was none other than the late, disgraced Fox News executive Roger Ailes, once the most sought-after media consultant in Republican circles. Thanks to his genius, McConnell won that election to the Senate.

Another generation of political operatives followed Ailes in the business of creating campaign commercials that would elect or reelect Republicans to key national and state offices, but no one could have forecast how these intensely competitive strategists would come together to swear off their work electing Republicans and go to work on the Lincoln Project, which was dedicated to defeating Donald Trump in 2020 and electing Joe Biden.

Raising millions of dollars from both small donors and billionaires, all intent on removing Trump from the presidency, the Lincoln Project’s commercials went viral on social media and played on TV as well. They hammered away at Trump, including a focus on how he discarded traditional Republican values such as free trade and surrendered America’s global leadership to China and Russia.

The solid Republican credentials of the Lincoln Project team cannot be disputed. One of its co-founders, Rick Wilson, who oversees the ads, served as field director for President George H.W. Bush’s campaign in 1988. Steve Schmidt, another co-founder who serves as a guest commentator at MSNBC, served as Sen. John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager in his run for the presidency and also worked in President George W. Bush’s White House. Stuart Stevens, the most prolific writer on the team, served as my media consultant in my run for the Senate years ago and more recently served as media consultant for Mitt Romney in his run for the presidency.

The Lincoln Project members have over 200 years of Republican Party activism combined, and Schmidt summed up on a recent “60 Minutes” interview what he and his compatriots have hoped to accomplish. Describing their mission as a “war for the soul of America,” Schmidt also admitted that “none of us will ever work for Republican politics again.”

That raises the question of what comes next for the Lincoln Project. As Schmidt says, they certainly won’t be returning to the Republican fold, where they earned sizable consulting fees over the years. But given their lucrative careers, most of them are now free to devote time and effort to whatever they wish, and it’s highly unlikely they will sail into the sunset. They are already at work in Georgia, where two seats in the U.S. Senate are up for grabs. If Democrats win, McConnell would be sent back to minority status, another objective of the Lincoln Project.

After Georgia, the Lincoln Project will focus on 2022, a year handing Republicans a difficult map for control of the Senate. It will focus its attention on those battleground states where Republican incumbents who refused to differ with Trump or acknowledge his 2020 defeat will be in its sights. Although the party that lost the presidency usually picks up seats in midterm elections, McConnell knows that 2022 could be very unusual, with a coalition-type president in office who has substantial chops when it comes to working across the aisle.

McConnell will be persuading Senate incumbents to run for reelection rather than require his party to come up with new candidates without name recognition. But this time he and his Senate campaign committee will have to contend with the Lincoln Project and its arsenal of media weapons it can inflict on candidates who sing from the McConnell hymnal.

With Trump talking about a new TV network to do battle with Fox News, and with his threatening to run again in 2024, the Lincoln Project can also serve as a check on a vengeful ex-president who is sure to use his Twitter feed on relentless and reckless attacks on the Biden administration and anyone who supports it.

The Senate Republicans’ campaign committee has substantial funding and access to special interest lobbies eager to comply with McConnell’s request for donations. Those will then be directed toward candidates who McConnell and the committee think have the best chance of adding to his Republican numbers in the Senate.

But the Lincoln Project represents a new and dangerous threat. Its credibility with donors in the progressive community should serve as a counterbalance to the dark money from ultra-conservative groups that have given some Republicans a decided advantage in past Senate elections.

A new day has dawned for campaigns in America, and that’s good news for Idahoans who are frustrated with the four GOP members of this state’s congressional delegation, all of whom served as “yes men” for Trump and who seldom, if ever, checked his crude and vulgar style of governing.

If Idahoans are wondering how to make a difference, my money is on the Lincoln Project. I hope many Idahoans, large and small contributors alike, send their campaign money where it has the potential to rid the United States Senate of a majority that has consistently voted in the interests of a minority of Americans.