Now more than ever, Republicans need a blacklist. It needn’t be very long — just eight names would suffice: John Weaver, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, George Conway, Reed Galen, Mike Madrid, Ron Steslow, and Jennifer Horn.

These eight are the founding members of the Donald Trump-hating Lincoln Project, that now utterly disgraced stink bomb of a political action committee that seemed to be far more adept at sexually preying on young men and separating gullible Democrats from their money than influencing the American electorate.

When we wrote about them two weeks ago, the full measure of the Lincoln Project’s awfulness hadn’t yet come into clear focus. At that time, they’d only recently thrown their sick senior leader under the bus a full three weeks after a lone journalist named Ryan Gidursky had broken the story in The American Conservative.

“John Weaver led a secret life that was built on a foundation of deception at every level,” they disingenuously tweeted. “He is a predator, a liar, and an abuser. We extend our deepest sympathies to those who were targeted by his deplorable and predatory behavior. We are disgusted and outraged that someone in a position of power and trust would use it for these means.”

But, as it turns out, these sanctimonious scumbags knew about their colleague’s depravity last summer. Yet they did nothing. Job One, it seems, wasn’t to protect innocent boys and young men from sexual predation; it was to help the Democrats beat Donald Trump on November 3. If a dozen or so boys and young men had to suffer the repeated and unwelcome sexual advances of cofounder John Weaver, well, that was apparently a price worth paying.

It’s sickening, but true.

As the Associated Press reports, “In June 2020, members of the organization’s leadership were informed in writing and in subsequent phone calls of at least 10 specific allegations of harassment against co-founder John Weaver, including two involving Lincoln Project employees, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the situation. The email and phone calls raise questions about the Lincoln Project’s statement last month that it was ‘shocked’ when accusations surfaced publicly this year. It’s also the first known suggestion that Weaver targeted a Lincoln Project staffer.”

Got that? They were shocked — SHOCKED — to find that homosexual predation was going on in their midst.

Steve Schmidt, the former senior campaign strategist and adviser to John McCain, took his sweet time before resigning on Friday — which happened to be Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. He did so in a tweet of never-ending drivel. He didn’t know! Honest! He did say he suffered from depression, though. So the lesson from The Lincoln Project is: If you get caught sexually preying on boys and young men, tell everyone you’re gay. And if you fail to protect those boys and young men from your predatory colleague, tell everyone you’re depressed.

Schmidt’s departure leaves just two dead-enders, Rick Wilson and Reed Galen, with the group. One wonders what the heck they’re waiting for.

“How unethical was the Lincoln Project?” asks Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff. “So unethical that it tolerated Weaver’s sexual harassment of boys and young men, and published the private messages of a co-founder who raised questions about his misconduct. The viciousness of the Lincoln Project should have come as no surprise. This project did not arise from concerns about public policy. It was a vehicle for revenge — revenge by [co-founder George] Conway for being snubbed by the White House; revenge for McCain’s acolytes for Trump’s treatment of their man; and revenge for consultants whom Trump had bypassed and rendered irrelevant.”

What’s more, the majority of the money raised by the Lincoln Project went to companies run by the group’s founders. So they weren’t just greedy and depraved; they were also deceitful. As the Washington Examiner reports, “‘It raises questions about where the rest of the money ultimately went,’ said Brendan Fischer with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. ‘Generally speaking, you’d expect to see a major super PAC spend a majority or more of their money on advertisements, and that’s not what happened here.’ Records show that only about one-third, $27 million, of the money raised by the super PAC went to TV and online advertisements during the 2020 election cycle.”

Good riddance, then, to the Lincoln Project and everyone associated with it. May none of them ever again be consulted by Republicans, nor ever again work on so much as a GOP campaign for dog catcher.