The Patriot Post® · Lincoln Project Betrayed Conservatives, but Failed

There are some who out of firm conviction and commitment to their stated principles play the game fairly, win or lose. Then there are those who seek to use underhanded tactics to defeat their opponents irrespective of the standards, all while justifying their behavior by insisting on the “righteousness” of their cause. The latter defines the fallaciously named “Lincoln Project,” a group of anti-Trump self-proclaimed “Republicans” that ran a well-funded ad campaign against President Donald Trump and Republican senators. The ads were, according to the left-wing Atlantic, “personally abusive, overwrought, pointlessly salacious, and trip-wired with non sequiturs.” Fortunately, the betrayal was largely a failure.

But that doesn’t mean The Lincoln Project is going to fade away into the obscurity it deserves. This group of “Never Trumpers,” clearly angered by the president’s refusal to concede the election, is now targeting the lawyers representing Trump’s legal challenge of the election results in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

In a social media message posted on Tuesday, The Lincoln Project shared the names and phone numbers of the “two attorneys attempting to help Trump overturn the will of the Pennsylvanian people” and called for people to “make them famous,” an obvious invitation for the public to harass and intimidate the lawyers. In a second social media post, the group encouraged individuals to create LinkedIn accounts and then send messages to employees of the two law firms representing Trump so as to “ask them how they can work for an organization trying to overturn the will of the American people.”

These despicable intimidation tactics would have Abraham Lincoln, a principled lawyer, rolling in his grave.

As National Review’s Dan McLaughlin, himself no fan of Trump, cogently argues, “We do not have a legal system only in order to ensure fairness. We also have it to promote the peaceable resolution of disputes and the acceptance of outcomes after everybody has had their day in court. We have civil lawsuits so that we do not have vendettas and duels. Trying to hound the lawyers out of the picture is asking something worse to fill the vacuum. There is a reason why Shakespeare’s famous line from Henry IV — ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’ — comes from Dick the Butcher, a conspirator looking to throw society into chaos in order to collapse the government.”

Not only does The Lincoln Project fail to live up to its namesake, it failed in its efforts to take down Republican senators running for reelection. The Project set as its goal, besides ousting Trump, the removal of Senate Republicans. The Washington Free Beacon reports that it “raised $67 million in its effort to destroy all Republicans this cycle, and its founders enjoyed numerous media profiles and MSNBC appearances.” Of the GOP senators specifically targeted, however, all but Martha McSally and Cory Gardner (both facing uphill battles) won reelection. The group plans to target David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in their runoff contests in Georgia.

The truth is that the members of The Lincoln Project are not really Republicans at all. They are political grifters who have taken advantage of the Left’s hatred of Trump to rake in millions. As the Washington Examiner notes, “After the election, the [Lincoln Project] plans to expand its brand into a new media network, recently signing with United Talent Agency to build Lincoln Media.” These charlatans not only fail to stand on any principles even remotely consistent with conservative values, but they’re actively opposing those principles. They are better described as traitors to the conservative cause and the Republican Party.