Donald Trump conservative critics launch PAC to fight reelection

Yet recent elections suggest that Trump’s party is losing ground with educated voters and women, particularly in America’s suburbs, which have traditionally leaned Republican. This new group hopes to push those voters further toward the Democrats.

Kellyanne Conway dismissed the group as a collection of failed campaign managers.

“They never got a president elected into the White House. I’m sure that hurts, very much. But they never really accommodated the growing Republican Party and understood how to beat Democrats and we did,” she told reporters at the White House.

Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for Trump’s reelection campaign, called the effort a “pathetic little club of irrelevant and faux ‘Republicans’ who are upset that they’ve lost all of their power and influence inside the Republican Party.”

The Lincoln Project is very much a work in progress, despite Tuesday’s official launch. While the core players don’t yet have titles, day-to-day operations will be led by Horn and Reed Galen, a veteran Republican operative who worked for McCain but left the GOP after Trump’s nomination in 2016.

The group begins as a super PAC, which means it can raise and spend unlimited sums of money and must disclose its donors.

“You’re seeing a shift from talk into action,” said Galen, describing the launch as “a big turning point for the political season and for the president’s reelection.”

Specifically, the group plans to focus on blocking Trump’s reelection and defeating Trump-allied Senate candidates in a handful of key 2020 battlegrounds. To do so, it’s targeting a narrow but important slice of the electorate: disaffected Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

While there is no concrete road map, Weaver said the organizers plan to fight the president’s reelection in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin along with Arizona and North Carolina. Their Senate efforts likely would focus on Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Maine and possibly Kansas and Kentucky.

Weaver said the group is already reviewing scripts for new ads, which are expected to begin running early next year.

“This is organic, and we’re going to be flexible,” he said. “We have to go out and prove ourselves and prove that we can be efficient and effective.”

Meanwhile, George Conway, who formally left the GOP last year, said he likely would serve in a “cheerleader” capacity for the new organization because of his limited political experience.

“I’m not a fundraiser or political consultant, but if I could help in that way and learn how to do that — even to raise a nickel or two — I’ll do it because it’s important,” he said. “For this, I think I can make an exception.”

He suggested the Lincoln Project would pay particular attention to Congress’ impeachment proceedings.

“If he’s not removed by the Senate, he needs to be removed at the ballot box,” he said of Trump. “The people in Congress who are enabling him, either actively or passively, they, too, are violating their oaths of office. … And they need to be removed, too.”