So while we may not "need" them, it's not short-sighted to realize the benefits of their culling of the Republican Party.
Their ultimate goal is attempting to re-legitimize the Republican Party. Why oh why would we want them legitimized again to do the exact same god-damn things Trump's administration wants to do with an added air of legitimacy, precisely?
The difference between Trump and any other Republican president is the overtness of his bigotry and his disrespect for conventions, procedure and decorum. That's it. Let's stop pretending to the contrary, K?
Reality has a well known liberal bias.
No one looking at the United States of America in the past several decades can actually take you seriously with that. Especially not marginalized folks.
It's a purity test. Hence why there are so many "all Republicans are terrible" posts in this thread. Instead of making continued progress, people are obsessing about the overall values of those who oppose Trump (which is ridiculous because by definition the worse Trump does, the more "center" the opposition would be). By attacking others who also hate Trump, liberals are basically setting up an obvious defeat in 2022 and 2024 rather than cementing our gains. But sadly we are in an era of politicalization where both parties obsess over purity than progress.
You make it sound like someone being anti-Trump should be enough to consider them my fellow bannermen. And you'll forgive me if that absolute barest minimum of human decency is not what I would consider an achievement in any stretch of the imagination. It's not even the starting line.
When the ultimate goal of TLP is to re-legitimize the GOP, why on earth would I, or anyone else who's been grossly affected by GOP policy since the 1980s, be OK with that? Let them continue to be illegitimate and unfit for public office in public, let their stink make them repellant, don't aid the work of the people trying to make the GOP a "reasonable choice" for the white cishet majority, please and thank you. No one is doing any favours for them by making "never Trump" the only thing that matters.
I don't see how it's a "purity test" to not want the GOP legitimized so white cishet America can comfortably and shamelessly vote for them yet again. If you see it that way, congrats on your privilege, the rest of us under the heel of that boot are gonna keep talking about it while you pretend there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm not saying there are controlled or that the fight for progressive should be stopped. I'm arguing that the Lincoln Project is the wrong enemy. The Lincoln Project will dissolve and it's member's absorbed into different organizations regardless of Democrats actions.
This is pretty naive. A highly successful campaign to keep the GOP legitimate that gains a (albeit conditionally) positive following of left-leaning people is apparently just going to blinker out into nothing because... reasons? No, they'll achieve their current goal and then move on to another with all those stacks of money they're getting. Since when has a Republican (or anyone for that matter) ever said "no thanks, I don't like money that I need in our current society to further my interests"?
Remember, everyone is allies here
At best, we're a loosely-assembled coalition with a single unified interest that should barely be considered an achievement. You're really over-selling it here.
And we teamed up with Stalin to beat Hitler. It won't be forever. Strange bedfellows only last until the monster is beaten.
.... I barely even know what to say to this, it's THAT historically ignorant. Iron Curtain, the Cold War that lasted 40 years, seriously NONE of that is ringing any bells?
The world is littered with examples of strange bedfellows going on to be the new monster. Stalin and all that followed him until Gorbachev is easily the most prominent example. Saddam Hussein is another.
It's just a really unfortunate thing that we have to keep re-learning this lesson ad infinitum.
On the one hand, TLP's leadership absolutely have a history of racism and all kinds of awful statements and campaigns, no question. The Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump are both led by disaffected neocons, people I very much do not want in our party -- what's next, neocon Dems saying how we need to bomb Iran? Not a good thought...
But on the other hand, their advertising this year shows a total about-face on exactly this issue.
To the point, here is an ad that the Lincoln Project uploaded yesterday. That Rick Wilson's Lincoln Project, with their ugly history of racism, made THIS, is kind of mind-blowing to say the least...
Courage can be found in America, just not in Washington.
www.youtube.com
But there it is, an ad of a black man holding a sign that says "My Life Matters" walking past a row of white people with guns, with audio from Martin Luther King in the ad. It's hard to imagine a bigger change from that Confederate flag cooler to this. Even if you think that they don't actually mean it and are, internally actually still as racist as ever, which is possible, this ad is quite the opposite of that.
So as for them going right back to the Republicans, while that is possible, with how many bridges they have burned this year with ads like the one above and their ones that go right at Trump, unless Trumpism is actually fully expunged from that party, I can't see it happening anytime soon. They have made it clear that Trump's enablers need to go as well. They explicitly oppose the Republicans who have bowed down to Trump.
And so that returns to the start of my post -- is the end result of this the neocons becoming Democrats? In the short term I welcome any support in defeating our racist-fascist President, but in the long term that is certainly quite concerning if they start trying to push us into whatever foreign war they want next. So yes, definitely do not give them money.
But that is a problem for another day; for now we need to defeat Trump, and their ads are helping do that.
Republicans don't have fucking principles, so performative gestures like the ones you describe that work to advance their ultimate goals of re-legitimizing the party is such an insignificant thing that it doesn't even warrant the rest of the GOP to actively forgive them for it.
And again, problems for other days tend to not be a sustainable idea long term.
Like.... I'm aware they're shitheads. Anyone with a basic level of knowledge should know this.
But that's not going to stop me from accepting their help in this situation. And cast them aside when no longer necessary.
Things are more complicated than everyone would like.
Oh, trust me, we're aware. The issue is that we're not sure
you actually are when you discuss casting aside temporarily-useful bad actors you've enabled to fight alongside you, as if we as a world have a solid history of being able to do that without it blowing up in our faces.
There aren't really enough new voters to explain the change by anything other than some kind of realignment - and I don't think that these people have suddenly become good progressives or liberals. I think they're probably still conservative, but they're not voting R any more. And the thing about realignments is that they can be sticky.
Though that's not really the question at hand - it's are there enough of them to be worth targeting. And considering the gains we saw in 2018 in districts like these, the answer looks like a yes.
I feel this mindset is zero-sum thinking about voters. There's 40% or more voters that aren't "new" by any stretch, they're a nebulous void that people dip in and out of voting all the time, given the right cicumstances and conditions.
And ignoring that fact ignores the most believable explanation: never-Trump Republicans would rather just dive into that nebulous void than give a vote to a Democrat, while a group of people from the void who are left of centre enough and that are sick of hearing about Trump all day every day are willing to vote just to stop hearing about him.
There are likely other ins and outs and many other groups to discuss from that rather LARGE bloc of lapsed voters who may be motivated to the polls, but one can't deny that "people who are just sick to death of the endless yammering about Trump" probably makes up a sizeable bloc of lapsed voters who are suddenly motivated to the polls by a desire to return to some sort of status quo in their periphery and creating a situation where they can go back to ignoring politics as usual.
So the conclusion being jumped to that never-Trump Republicans are some important voting bloc seems like the take one would have only if they consider that 40+% of non-voters to be some sort of static list of people and that the remaining voters are the only ones to consider. Which is... certainly a way of thinking. Not one I would subscribe to, clearly.