Sarah Longwell Has A Plan
Yesterday William Kristol wrote about a Bulwark-adjacent effort to undermine Trump among conservatives. The Bulwark’s publisher, Sarah Longwell, also runs the Republican Accountability PAC, a group dedicated to the proposition, Never Again Trump! In 2020 Republican Voters Against Trump “targeted swing voters in key states with messages from Republicans and ex-Republicans who explained why they couldn’t vote for Trump. That campaign proved to be among the most effective advertising of the election cycle.”
Republican Accountability PAC is the successor and yesterday announced a $50 million campaign against Señor T “starting off with more than 100 new, first-person video testimonials of former Trump voters. These are not just former Republican voters, but are former Trump voters. And they explain in their own words, usually in videos recorded on their own cell phones, why they can’t support Trump in 2024.”
You can watch some of the videos at rvat.org, which I did. I couldn’t help thinking the people I was watching are morons who voted for Trump in 2020. How do you take them seriously? Here, watch Beth from Virginia, who. Voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, the first one on the page:
Jan 6 is what persuaded her he’d make a bad president and would “lower the moral standards of the country.” She said she has no hesitancy voting for Biden because “with Trump, evil is on the ballot.”
And this one’s from Nathan, who also voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, donated to him, phone-banked for him and says he’ll never switch his party registration but is voting for Biden in November.
These videos will be made into ads that will run on radio, TV, billboards and digital media in swing states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. )North Carolina is the big 2024 swing state and I hope someone tells them.)
Kristol says the videos are remarkable to watch: “Americans from very different backgrounds giving different reasons, in their own voices— some of them pensive, some solemn, some emotional— for why we can’t risk another term of Donald Trump… During the 2020 campaign, as RVAT’s testimonials got quite a bit of attention, I’d get calls from friends from Biden world or Democratic organizations expressing surprise, even a little horror: Why were we featuring voters who had made the mistake of voting for Trump? Why were we publicizing people who spent some of their time explaining why they hadn’t voted Democratic in the past? Why were there testimonials from voters who acknowledged they weren’t altogether enthusiastic about Joe Biden? That’s the point, I’d explain. To win the election, you need not just to win the true believers. You need to win over hesitant or even reluctant voters. And these voters respond to people like themselves, saying things that resonate with them, and sounding different from the normal cheerleading one (understandably) hears in political ads. I’m a Never Trumper. And I welcome with open arms all Never Again Trumpers.”
Reid Epstein wrote about this development for the NY Times yesterday. $50 million is big time. “Unlike Democratic organizations that aim to help President Biden by promoting his record in office, Longwell’s group focuses solely on attacking Trump through the voices of his former backers. The Republican Voters Against Trump website features 100 videos, from one to three minutes long, of Republicans speaking to a computer or mobile-phone camera about why they voted for Trump in 2016 or 2020 and will not do so in 2024.”
The personal testimonial style, Longwell said, has proved far more successful in her focus groups at cleaving Trump voters away from him than traditional attack advertising that contrasts Trump with Biden.
…“It’s really important to understand you’re not building a pro-Joe Biden coalition,” Longwell said. “You’re building an anti-Trump coalition.”
In 2020, Republican Voters Against Trump ended the presidential campaign with more than 1,000 homemade videos on its website of people who voted for Trump in 2016 but said they would not do so again. For 2024, the group is starting with 100 testimonials and instructions on its website for past Trump supporters to submit their own stories.
…“They view Trump as a cultural moderate,” she said. “They think he’s paying for abortions. Nobody thinks this guy has an ounce of sexual morality. They don’t think he’s Mike Pence. And so that sort of helps him.”
Longwell said she had $20 million already committed to her 2024 effort and aimed to raise the rest of the money for her advertising campaign between now and the fall.
And what about this guy? Do you think he’ll vote for Josh Hawley or Lucas Kunce when he fills out his “not Trump” ballot?
Ever wonder about these outside groups that spend immense amounts of money in campaigns without coordinating with the candidates? I looked through the reports (incomplete) about which candidates had the most money spent on them— both positive and negative (House races only). The two top recipients of largesse from outside groups were Tom Suozzi (D) and Mazi Pilip (R), the candidates for the open Long Island seat that George Santos was booted out of. $9,693,997 was sent attacking Pilip and $7,419,147 went to anti-Suozzi attack ads. Meanwhile Suozzi had $3,436,368 bolstering him and Pilip had $625,316 bolstering her. Most of this spending was from the two political parties themselves.
The third biggest expenditure was in Orange County— $4,757,112 in AIPAC attack ads against Dave Min (D). The ads don’t appear to have been effective at all. With 84% of the vote counted, Min beat the AIPAC candidate, Joanna Weiss, pretty substantially— 42,676 (25.7%) to 31,941 (19.2%). There’s no way to prove this, but I think AIAPC is so despised by so many people at this point— the pro-genocide PAC— that their anti-Min ads probably helped him more than hurt him! Similarly, in TX-26, a group of conservative billionaires spent $2,121,141 tearing down MAGAT Gil Brandon; he won big anyway and won’t have to deal with a primary. The same group spent $2,002,259 slamming Mark Harris in NC-08. He won too— and avoided a runoff.