Attorney George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, and three other prominent Republicans have launched a new campaign aimed at ensuring President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
Outspoken Trump critic Conway, GOP media consultant Rick Wilson, and Republican strategists Steve Schmidt and John Weaver announced The Lincoln Project super PAC in an op-ed in The New York Times in which they bashed Trump and his enablers for replacing conservatism “with an empty faith led by a bogus prophet.”
“Over these next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box and to elect those patriots who will hold the line,” they wrote in the column published Tuesday, titled “We Are Republicans, And We Want Trump Defeated.”
“We do not undertake this task lightly, nor from ideological preference. We have been, and remain, broadly conservative (or classically liberal) in our politics and outlooks,” they added. “Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, but our shared fidelity to the Constitution dictates a common effort.”
They summarized their strategy:
Our efforts are aimed at persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to help ensure a victory in the Electoral College, and congressional majorities that don’t enable or abet Mr. Trump’s violations of the Constitution, even if that means Democratic control of the Senate and an expanded Democratic majority in the House.
Trump has “neither the moral compass nor the temperament to serve,” they added.
The op-ed also accused congressional Republicans who continue to defend Trump amid the impeachment inquiry over the Ukraine scandal of doing “far worse” than marching along to his beat.
“Their defense of him is imbued with an ugliness, a meanness and a willingness to attack and slander those who have shed blood for our country, who have dedicated their lives and careers to its defense and its security, and whose job is to preserve the nation’s status as a beacon of hope,” they wrote.
“We look to Lincoln as our guide and inspiration,” they concluded. “He understood the necessity of not just saving the Union, but also of knitting the nation back together spiritually as well as politically. But those wounds can be bound up only once the threat has been defeated. So, too, will our country have to knit itself back together after the scourge of Trumpism has been overcome.”