The Lincoln Project Is No Savior

Reclaiming cultural stock is its main preoccupation — defeating Republicans is just an added plus.

[From left to right] Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and co-founder of the Lincoln Project Jennifer Horn. Courtesy of Flickr by Gage Skidmore, Veni. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 and CC BY-SA 2.0.

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…and we will deserve it,” once said Arizona Senator Lindsey Graham of then-candidate Donald Trump, describing him as an existential threat to the Republican party. Four years later, the GOP has merely become Trump’s instrument to wield for his own selfish political ends–concerned for their party’s future, those who harbored animosity for Trump’s antics came to dub themselves ‘Never Trumpers’, and in an effort to steer the Republican party clear of what they deemed to be its ultimate demise, “The Lincoln Project” was born.

Creators of this project had their eyes set on a clear goal–sanitize the legacy of the pre-Trump Republican party such that Democrats believe their most recent arrival to the Oval Office to be an aberration. This was most-evident when their Twitter account posted an image of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush together with the caption “Retweet if you agree.” which had appropriately gotten them a lot of attention –the implication behind that image, and the rest of the project’s editorial vision, is that the Republican party of yesteryears was just as honorable as the Democratic party of today. The problem — as is the case with the…