My view on the Lincoln Project

[Just_Vote_Dem]

1. They'll try hard to honestly get Biden elected.

2. Once Biden is elected, they will spend the next four years propping up what they will probably spin as a "sane" Republican alternative to that "other guy" ("What was his name, the guy before Biden? Hmmmm.." )

3. Last 18 months of Biden's term, rip him endlessly while propping up their newest piece of garbage

TRUMP IS THE RESULT OF THE WORK OF THESE PEOPLE. DON'T BE FOOLED.

[SoonerPride]

1. They will continue to purge the R party of trumpists.

They won't attack Biden.

[Mike 03]

2. This is the impression I got from their Town Hall yesterday.

These are smart people and they are deadly serious and deeply committed.

In the future they may not always be our friends, but they are teaching us how this is done. It needs to be studied.

[Cousin Dupree]

6. You are spot on. They are writing the book on how to do get rid of a bad man.

[onecaliberal]

8. I attended the town hall yesterday and I agree with you.

They repeatedly said he was the right man for the time. They respect Biden and his decency. Im not fooling myself for a second. However, when it came time to pick between trump and America, they chose their country and democracy.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

4. I hope you're right.

We will see in a couple of years.

[pwb]

3. Trump was suppose to bring it all home

to Putin. They got caught but they also got close. Their Third Right could not beat our constitution.

[SoonerPride]

10. It's not over yet. Not until Biden is in power will we be safe(r)

It is still highly dangerous!

[octoberlib]

5. There will always be a conservative opposition

party in this country. If they can make it a better party , more power to them. I actually think some of are open to working on Dem campaigns in red and purple districts.

[onecaliberal]

11. They definitely are. They're trying to flip the senate for Dems as well.

They know our policy positions. They recognize America has to move on from the racist past.

[BComplex]

26. I think they're more concerned with the fascist past & present than with the racist past,

but yeah, they're at least saving us from that.

[onecaliberal]

28. They're worried about everything we are worried about.

I listened to the entire town hall.

[we can do it]

7. Fully agree. We need to use them, not fund them.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

12. Thanks. In my opinion

They're trying to save the Republican party.

Saving the country is an afterthought.

[HotTeaBag]

23. I've donated and will continue to do so.

I believe in what they are doing and also know the risks they took in order to do it and I fully support their work.

I am thankful that they are working so hard on our behalf because they've pushed the Biden digital team to be better in order to try and keep up.

[Hortensis]

9. These people are anti-Trump CONSERVATIVES. I'm sorry

you find it unacceptable that these conservatives are trying to help elect a Democratic president and congressional majorities and trying to purge the worst of the Republicans from congress and state governments, but that they will then try to rebuild America's conservative party with mostly moderate conservatives with traditional conservative values. (Horrors!)

Don't see your problem, to put it mildly. Half our nation is conservative, and this is what our nation needed to happen long ago as the Republican Party became taken over by kleptocratic cabals and social and religious extremists. Long before desperate need forced these conservatives to try to elect Democrats as a means of purging RW criminals from government.

[WhiteTara]

16. Steve Schmitt was Sarah Palin's

coach. I see their true colors come out in their tweets which I follow without following them. I also remind them they get no applause from me as they are cleaning up the mess they created over all these years in their only desire to win. They cared for NOTHING except winning until they were sick of all that winning with trump.

I like their present work, but don't trust them in the slightest. Don't forget Conway is a Federalist and they want to be winner take all. So really, it's just a turf war between the Kochs, et al and the TCO (Transnational Criminal Organization headed by Semion Mogelovich.)

[Just_Vote_Dem]

18. Thank you for saying it better than I could n/t

[Hortensis]

32. Yes, Republican-aligned operatives almost all went way too far,

holding on and pursuing their careers. Most moderate cons believed it'd turn around, that backlash would keep their party from becoming what it did.

Btw, did any sensible person here foresee last century that the right would go as crazy as they have? Not me, and I've been watching their shift farther and farther right with concern and then alarm since the 1980s. There was never a time I didn't believe it could happen here, just never thought it would. Before about 2010.

And neither did people like Nicolle Wallace or Joe Scarborough, both solid conservatives who believe in equality and progressive government. On both right and left, there's enormous difference between functional mainstream balance and destructive extremism. And insisting everyone on the right is a destructive extremist and looking for shovels to bash them with is not just clueless, it's dangerously clueless. Moderate cons are the lost part of the majority We the People frequently united into to smash the bad eggs.

[WhiteTara]

39. I'm sorry to say that yes, I knew

I have been trying to leave the country since 2003, but that's not my "destiny" as I am still here.

I grew up in post-war Europe and my mother took me to the DP camps so I could interpret for her. I heard way too many stories for such a young mind and since I am good with the obvious, others call it prescience, when *co won through a coup in 2000 (bloodless though it was) I knew then. When I knew he would win again, I was truly desperate. I remember that the ones who left Germany early, not only survived but have thrived.

I am here and this is where I'll die, most likely.

[Hortensis]

42. Your childhood didn't allow illusions about what people

were capable of. Mine to a real degree also, though my experiences were milder and personal and without a long series of horror stories from others.

I guess, now that you mention it, that 2000 was definitely alarming, along with the chiseling away at our system of laws and mores from within all through W's increasingly authoritarian presidency.

At least you can die knowing you did your part to rescue our nation so it didn't happen here. But also knowing it can happen anywhere, including here still. People who can be good should make up their minds not to be part of the problem. Fascism uses fear and bigotry to divide and conquer. We won't be safe until we've rebuilt a center that can and will unify to stand against them.

[melman]

40. Joe Scarborough is not a moderate

He pretends to be one on TV.


But anyone who remembers him as a congressman knows that he is a right winger.

[Hortensis]

46. OK: THERE IS NO POLITICAL ORIENTATION OF "MODERATE."

That is a modifier speaking to degree.

People are MODERATE liberal or MODERATE conservative.

Studies consistently find that people are goulashes of beliefs from across the spectrum but that virtually all are dominant liberal OR dominant conservative and align left or right accordingly. Personality has a lot to do with that, liberal OR conservative, mild, moderate, strong in degree. (Beyond that, both sides become more and more flaky-extremist in degree -- and more and more like each other and less and less like others.)

So, whenever someone who knows better calls lifelong liberal VP Biden "a moderate," I know that person's trying to deceive people that he's not liberal. Scarborough's "a moderate," but not exactly Biden's kind.

Btw, the word "centrist" is being used a lot to deceive also. Political ideologies have developed such a wide divide that there is almost no such person. I mean, how can you be "centrist" about kidnapping small children as a deliberately vicious government policy? Is there a center position where people who think they're some liberal-conservative hybrid think it'd be okay if the cages were bigger and the children were given thicker mattresses? Maybe no fewer than one caretaker for every 15 inconsolable babies? How about a centrist position between the desirability of having coverage for preexisting conditions ruled unconstitutional -- or not?

When people speak of redeveloping our center, they mean bringing together liberals and conservatives who can work together, not become each other.

[misanthrope]

52. I had misgivings in the 1980s because I've lived in the Deep South all my life

I know how bad it can get. When I noticed how the Reagan revolution employed the Southern strategy and made Americans comfortable with their hatred and selfishness. When it became obvious in the 1990s that the GOP was following the lead of Southern conservatives, I feared the direction.

Then came the 2000 election and the Dubya administration with its considerable ties to the Heart of Dixie. Though the "slippery slope" is supposedly a logical fallacy, we were sliding down it at breakneck speed.

When Sarah Palin was heartily embraced by the American right, it was as plain as possible what had occurred. It accelerated with the disgraceful treatment of President Obama and the simultaneous rise of Trump.

Maybe I'm just too cynical. Maybe I've spent too much time in Alabama where my white skin meant I heard the disgusting things others said when they assumed they were in "safe" company. None of this has surprised me.

[Hortensis]

54. Boy, is that a good description! Last night historian Jon Meacham,

discussing racism, said Trump is not an aberration in the broad sweep of American history but the fullest manifestation of forces that we have to do everything we can to make aberrant. He's very much in "the Wallace tradition," who was in the Strom Thurmond tradition, etc., right on back. A poll the segment started with said 32% approve Strom Trump while 67% disapprove.

In the South, you recognized these forces becoming dangerously resurgent. Fearful racists vote.

Out in Los Angeles, diversity is so normal that nothing but white people in any public place would have a weird, "what's wrong with this picture" look that would grab attention in itself. Different. And with that relative comfort, those determinedly voting fear and hostility against other people not so evident and placidly not bothering to vote too common.

Btw, regarding speaking in company, when we moved to GA, the same scurrilous political story was being told at parties in both places -- about Hillary and Bill decorating the WH Christmas tree with condoms. The difference was that in CA it was enjoyed out in a shadowy corner of a back yard where people went to smoke and share whatever else needed privacy from the big group, while in GA the group was happily endorsing the lie in the middle of a large, bright dining room while other guests passed on both sides.

[Thekaspervote]

20. This!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

31. Half of the country isn't truly conservative.

Half of the country thinks they're conservative, but every time a poll is done on people's attitudes, they fall on the liberal side almost every time. The real problem is that people fall for labelling nonsense, and have been taught to fear "liberals".

[Hortensis]

41. Conservative by PERSONALITY, which is huge.

In the cultural/political meaning of the word, though, yes. I like to focus on personality rather than party labels because personality changes little and reveals itself clearly through actions. When you read the "Liberal Party" is executing homosexuals, you know it's not liberal, not even for "there," wherever that is.

As you say, traditional American political conservatism -- which the current RW powers have purged from national government -- embraces most of the liberal principles our nation was founded on, such as equality, rights of the individual, progressive government that serves the people. Varying in degrees from liberals, yes, but even though far-right powers are trying to erase these beliefs, corrupting them with some success, they're baked into our national psyche.

And of course, the "labeling nonsense." For another label, , today's Republicans are basically just John Bircher authoritarian followers 50 years on. Their fearful, fanatically hostile aggression against Russia of the Cold War era has been deliberately refocused internally against the "fascist-socialist commie radical liberal Democrats."

Divided we fell, but as more and more conservatives capable of rationality and decency dissociate from the GOP I think we're moving toward a reunification of our democracy's working center.

[denem]

13. They are committed to taking out DeSantis.

Jennifer Rubin thinks they may form a political party in future.

Kick out the Trump enablers, too
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/09/coming-trump-enablers-too

[Hortensis]

24. Rubin/Lincoln: "If you supported Trump, your political career should end."

That message is likely to be amplified by the pandemic holocaust devastating people and economy.

And this is just part of a swell of discussion about whither goest the RW party after Trump. The GOP leadership committed to becoming a hard-right, white male-dominated party serving the wealthy back in the 1980s-90s, accelerating into massive corruption, betrayal and extremism in this century. Trump's election was a voter rebellion against their own party leadership, their second rebellion that failed disastrously.

The GOP's massively corrupt leadership has to be purged, and their voters are the only ones who can do it, but they need leadership so they don't latch onto a "kinder and gentler" Hitler for their next try. Rubin's obviously hoping these guys will help build a new party she can belong to.

Rubin: This is likely only the beginning of efforts to clear the decks in the Republican Party — for those interested in rebuilding it. Trump is not the only person who must lose if the party is to be rescued; the partners in Trumpism must go down with him. (In my mind, it will require such a thorough transformation you might as well start over with a new name and logo. The “Lincoln Party” or the “Union Party” might work).

If one believes there should be no place in U.S. politics for a party built on white grievance, contempt for truth and just plain meanness, it is necessary to show that the problem was just not Trump but the men and women who went along with the cult, the lies, the worship of the Confederacy, the attacks on the rule of law and the xenophobia.

[denem]

27. All the 'Lincoln Party' has to do

is run against trumpers in selected districts and split the Republican vote. They want all the current GOP Senators out. If they run in 2022, it could assist Dems in close races. Pure speculation.

The LP's slogan is

Link to tweet

[BComplex]

29. AND who went along with fox propaganda and all the conspiracy theories that this republican

party ushered in and weaponized against our union.

This has actually been the second confederacy; only difference was that it wasn't a state by state, or geographical, secession, it was more ideological and factional.

[Midnightwalk]

14. It won't take that long but that's ok

There will be a push to flip the senate back republican in midterms if we win it. The house anyway.

We need to learn to make ads and points as well as they do.

2022 doesn’t matter if we don’t win in 2020. I’ll take all their help and more in the current struggle for our country and lives.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

17. Yep, I'll take their help now as well

But after what the Rethugs/Conservatives have done for the last 40 years, we have to watch our backs

[OnDoutside]

15. I only agree with Point 1. I think there will be an internal Civil War within the GOP after Trump is

gone. They can't (and i suspect won't) go back to what's left of the current GOP, don't forget scum like Cruz/Pompeo/Haley etc, will be vying to take control.

[Midnightwalk]

25. Maybe not exactly internal

The Lincoln Project has major ties to the tea party

[link:https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/lincoln-project-video-wiz-ben-howe-ads-are-driving-trump-insane/amp|]

The GOP brand is toxic. What better way to rise to the top of the conservative movement than to actively denigrate the current party, the republicans, as treasonous corrupt cowards.

Then push a new party, like Ben Howe did with the tea party, for the midterms. You and your allies rise to the top bypassing those who remained with the old party that is rightfully despised.

I don’t think I’m wearing a tin foil hat to worry about that. I think it could be a winning strategy.

I like their ads and criticisms of republicans. I don’t trust them because of their support of the tea party and palin and republican policies in the past.

For now, beat trump anyway we can. After watch our backs.

[OnDoutside]

44. Howe, yes, but most of the LP founders weren't. Schmidt, Wilson, Galen etc are old school Reps.

Have a look at their townhall from last night, especially for about the 5 or 6 minutes from the 43 min mark when Wilson is speaking. He gives a quite clear mission statement.

[FM123]

19. I don't think of them as friends.

I think of them as traveling companions on the road to trump's removal. After that, our paths may diverge and they will probably go back to the GOP that was the pre-trump version. Those kind of old-school repubs, we know how to deal with and take care of so if it comes to that, we will fight the good fight and beat them too when the time comes.

[CTyankee]

35. some of them, let's hope, will come to see that the "pre-Trump version" was exactly what led their

party into hell in the first place. Trump didn't just magically happen out of nowhere. Someplace in the republican psyche is that dark place that is always there, calling to them to come back...only those who actually see what there is in the republican strain that can lead to the Trumpian monster will see the light and come over to our side. Or call themselves an Independent but always vote Dem until we get rid of the monster. Then, who knows what they'll do...

[aikoaiko]

21. I doubt Biden will be seeking a second term.

[BComplex]

33. I don't either, aikoaiko. In fact, I think he may resign before his term is up to insure that we at

least have a FIRST woman president BEFORE the 2024 election. I think Biden (and his wife) want us to cross that Rubicon BEFORE the next election. I really think his vp choice will end up president at some point in Biden's first term.

I've just had that feeling from the beginning. IMHO, Biden is one of the NEW "Fathers of our Country". We're having to start all over again, pretty much, after overthrowing the Russians and expelling them from our country's government.

[Cosmocat]

22. IDK - things won't change nearly that quick

They are going full on after pretty much every R senator up for reelection. Not just 45.

Here is the thing - IF we can win the election AND he actually leaves office, he will NOT go away and he WILL keep the whip on the R party. It is his now. AND, you are going still have a lot of the complete insane POS like Nunes, Gaetz, Jordan running around congress who they have expressed disdain for. As someone noted in a article this week - they are pretty much dead to the party that exists now.

I also would put a LOT of money on him easily winning the nomination in four years if does lose and leave.

They might at some point find some golden boy/girl they can try to rally around to rebuild the party, but it won't happen as long as 45 is alive (and not in jail).

[Yeehah]

30. They're republicans

Expect the worst.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

34. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is a dangerous way to think.

And that's how too many are thinking of the Lincoln Project.

[KatyMan]

36. Agree

Not to compare them as people, but they're our allies the way the Soviets were our allies in WWII--once the common enemy is vanquished, the Rovian tactics will resume. To quote a favorite Star Trek DS9 episode "these are not nice people we're dealing with here".

[Binkie The Clown]

37. America is founded upon honest and respectful debate among differing points of view

We need to have both liberals and conservatives who can respect each other and have honest debates. Anything that the Lincoln project does to rein in the insanity on the right and return conservatives to being honest and respectful is work I can support.

[StarfishSaver]

38. I don't care

If that's their plan, they'll do it anyway, regardless what they're doing now.

We need all the help we can get now and they're very effective. We can deal with the rest later.

[Caliman73]

47. That, I think, is the point of the OP.

The poster is not saying that we should interfere with what Lincoln Project is doing, just that we should remember who they are and not "fall in love" which is what has historically been said about Liberals. We "fall in love" and conservatives "fall in line".

Many people on DU think that Lincoln is some kind of "reform" movement for the GOP and they truly want Biden in. They want Trump out because he exposes many of the GOP's flaws.

We do need all the help we can get, but like you said, "we can deal with the rest later" and we should be ready to deal with the rest later because our partnership with Lincoln will end and they will revert to promoting conservative policies and politicians as soon as they can.

[backscatter712]

43. Frame this as a victory. THE GOP IS DIVIDED!!!

Yes, that's worth a celebration!



That seems to be a regular tactic in politics - try to divide the other guys, and don't let the other guys divide your party.

They tried hard with the Bernie or Bust stuff. But that seems to be fizzling. Bernie himself is working pretty closely with Biden. A few people are still upset over not winning, but I'm not seeing a huge split. The Democrats stand united.

Now the GOP, OTOH... What do you think the Lincoln Project is? The Trumpies dismissed it and thought it would fizzle. Instead, it went viral, and they're directly attacking Trump about as viciously as you can get! And a lot of independents and moderate Republicans are joining them.

The Republicans really have a sharp and widening crack right now - all the right-wing ideology in the world can't paper over what a criminal clusterfuck Trump's administration has become.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

45. Best case scenario they help blow up that piece of shit death

cult of a party. Prob. won't happen. And in two years we'll be right here discussing the new iteration of the Teabaggers and what fucking lunatics they are.

[roamer65]

48. Their fate will be similar to the Canadian Progressive Conservative party circa 1993.

Last edited Fri Jul 10, 2020, 01:38 PM - Edit history (3)

The Repuke party faces a split and civil war for at least 10 years.

I have NO problem giving money to a group like the TLP, as it will initiate this process.

It’s called asymmetric warfare to protect our republic.

[George II]

49. We should accept any help we get to defeat trump. That should be the #1 priority of all Americans...

Sure, things won't be rosy after Biden wins, but think of the alternatives.

If we hadn't allied ourselves with the Soviets in WWII, we might all be speaking German today.

[onetexan]

50. Sheesh people, Biden isn't elected yet. These are sane Republicans trying to help get him elected.

We don't know what the future holds so there's no point speculating what these sensible GOP will do IF Biden is elected. For now let's be thankful for their help. They aren't changing parties and have made it known the right thing is to help get Biden elected since they don't want the country devolving into an authoritarian, fascist state.
As i've said before, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"..for now.

[BrightKnight]

51. We have a 2 party state. A more sane GOP is not a bad thing.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

53. If they become more sane.

Let's hope so.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

55. If people want to send money to the guy who wrote a defense of why he said he himself

would have shot Michael Brown in the face, just because he's a good videographer; and his co-worker, who thought Palin was a good idea,well, it's going to be hard to stop them.