The insufferable grifters at the Lincoln Project have been doing their darndest throughout this election cycle to get Democrats elected, and while the results of the presidential election aren’t in yet, the results of the Lincoln Project’s efforts are: They failed. Miserably.
These Never Trump former Republicans had one job: Get Trump out of the White House and beat all close-race Republicans seeking reelection to the Senate. Instead, so far 6 million more people have voted for Trump in 2020 than voted for him in 2016. Trump garnered 63 million votes four years ago, and after all Rick Wilson’s whining and moaning, Trump is up to nearly 69 million today — and the votes are still rolling in. According to exit polls, 93 percent of Republican voters supported Trump in this election, up 3 percentage points from 2016 data from the same firm.
If political power and an anti-Republican agenda is what the Lincoln Project was going for, they must have been disappointed to learn, huddled in their Utah bunker, that even if Biden wins the election — third time’s the charm — he can enjoy spinning around in his Oval Office chair for the next 1,460 days while Mitch McConnell joyously kills his hopes and dreams in the Senate, and Republicans keep picking up House seats.
“They’re all supposedly former Republicans, all of them hacks funded by wealthy liberals. They didn’t move a single vote away from Donald Trump,” said Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Wednesday night of the Lincoln Project team. “Trump garnered 63 million votes in 2016, and already close to 68 million despite enduring years of attack — so 68 million votes in 2020. Yet the media slavishly elevated these hateful people from the Lincoln Project.”
Maybe it was their melodramatic ads that turned off voters. Or maybe it was their shameless elitism and disdain for Trump-voting Republicans — Remember Wilson calling Trump supporters “the credulous boomer rube demo”? — that wrecked their messaging. They certainly didn’t fail for lack of funding.
The Lincoln Project, founded by former Republicans but funded mostly by Democrats, raked in upwards of $60 million since its inception just under a year ago, with the super PAC spending $28 million on the presidential race alone and pouring millions more into congressional races. It became one of the top-spending outside groups in the 2020 election, after coming under fire for funneling its dollars into firms owned by its own members.
But they all got rich, which is all they ever really cared about. https://t.co/RrJ9VAdGq5
— Greg Corombos (@Dateline_DC) November 5, 2020
In a recent ad, the Lincoln Project slammed Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst for “kissing up to Mitch McConnell.” Ernst held on to her seat, defeating her Democratic challenger by more than 110,000 votes, and McConnell blew media favorite Amy McGrath out of the water, winning by more than 20 percentage points, and likely retaining his position as Senate majority leader. Meanwhile, despite the Lincoln Project’s best efforts and lumps of cash, Susan Collins swept her Maine race by nearly 9 percentage points, and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is poised to defeat Cal Cunningham in North Carolina.
The group also dumped $1 million into Texas, but despite empty media promises that the Lone Star State would be in play and could flip blue, Trump won it handily.
At least now we have confirmation that The Lincoln Project was quite possibly the biggest grift in modern American politics
— Shadi Hamid (@shadihamid) November 4, 2020
Despite its colossal failures, however, the Lincoln Project has made clear it has no plans to leave the scene. In fact, it has recently announced plans to kick off a media brand based on the unfounded idea that there’s a market for the harebrained opinions of its disgruntled members.
hahahahaha https://t.co/SfLG83CCKx
— Jon Gabriel (@exjon) November 5, 2020
While the Lincoln Project remains the worst of the bunch, the fact is that the entire Never Trump movement — if one can even call the handful of people who take Tom Nichols seriously and a few self-righteous David French followers a “movement” — is dead on arrival.
“Most of the Never Trump movement is on salary to the Never Trump movement,” noted Charles P. Pierce at Esquire. “[O]utside of glossy magazines and network green rooms, Never Trump has no constituency, and it certainly isn’t going to build one based on Tuesday’s results.”
The Never Trump movement is relevant only to three remaining groups. First, it is of course valuable to the few it literally employs, who’ve made it their personal brand to hate the president and half the country. Second, it is valuable to the mainstream media, which look to the Trump-deranged pundits to fill token “conservative” panel seats where they regurgitate stale talking points about why real conservatives are abhorrent and unprincipled. The Lincoln Project’s Election Day flop, however, has proved the group is a money-sucking failure of epic proportions and of zero value to the Democratic Party.
If the Lincoln Project is relevant to anyone else, it is of value thirdly to the true Republicans and conservatives who have made a laughingstock out of the group and ridden its failures to a red wave of congressional offices. Republicans should hope Democrats hire the Lincoln Project every election cycle.
