A group of Republicans working to sink President Donald Trump’s re-election now see another political feat that’s necessary for them to have a shot at reclaiming their party: flipping the U.S. Senate to the Democrats, The Sacramento Bee reports.
The Lincoln group believes that defeating Trump alone is insufficient to spur the reckoning required to salvage a party that will almost undoubtedly confront a crossroads if the president loses to Joe Biden this fall.
Many in the group argue that GOP senators must pay a steep price for their unabating fealty to Trump, even if it hands Democrats complete control of the federal government.
“The analogy would be in the same way that fire purifies the forest, it needs to be burned to the ground and fundamentally repudiated,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican-turned-independent political strategist who now works for The Lincoln Project, according to The Bee. “Every one of them should be voted out of office, with the exception of Mitt Romney.”
The group has placed six-figure ad buys against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, as well as Sens. Joni Ernst in Iowa, Thom Tillis in North Carolina and Martha McSally in Arizona, as Republicans try to hold onto their narrow three-seat majority.
“They are the only … human beings who had the authority and the ability to keep this president in check constitutionally and politically, and every one of them made a conscious decision to not do so,” said Jennifer Horn, a former New Hampshire GOP chairwoman who now advises the Lincoln Project.
“The only way to make sure that Trumpism doesn’t continue to rule the Republican Party for years to come is to make sure that we defeat not only the president, but those people who have enabled him.”
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