The Lincoln Project, a political action committee dedicated to taking down President Donald Trump, intends to help push a Democratic agenda should presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden win the election in November.
Project co-founder John Weaver confirmed the group’s post-election intentions to The Washington Post in an article published on Monday.
“The group is preparing to vehemently oppose efforts by GOP senators to obstruct and stymie Biden’s agenda, should he win the presidency, Weaver confirmed,” WaPo opinion columnist Greg Sargent wrote.
Sargent continued:
Weaver insisted the group would actively work against Republicans who obstruct a Biden presidency, which would face a deeper crisis than in 2009, when Republicans tried to obstruct Obama in hopes of profiting off continuing economic misery.
“He will have a mandate to clean up the mess that Trump has created with the help of his enablers,” Weaver said of a Biden presidency. “That shouldn’t be held up. We intend to do all we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
I asked Weaver what the Lincoln Project would do if a President Biden and a Democratic Congress tried to raise taxes on the rich to help fund a multitrillion-dollar rescue effort. Weaver said he couldn’t directly address this until he saw specifics, but said: “We’ll be generally supportive of trying to get this country moving forward.”
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If the Lincoln Project has a broader agenda, then, it appears to be burning down as much of the GOP that helped bring us Trump as possible. Obviously, we should approach all this with a trust-but-verify skepticism, but Weaver has now planted markers for us to judge the group against.
The anti-Trump members of the GOP in The Lincoln Project will likely play a large role in a budding Biden campaign strategy to win over Republican voters discouraged or unhappy with the party under Trump. The project is already actively campaigning against Trump and has vowed to try and knock off vulnerable GOP members of Congress such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado.
Biden’s campaign has reportedly reached out to and won over the support of John Kasich, a failed GOP presidential candidate and former governor of Ohio. Kasich is expected to speak at the Democratic National Convention next month on behalf of the former vice president.
Kasich was a bottom contender in the 2016 GOP primary, never polling in the top three according to RealClearPolitics polling average until late into the primary contest when all but three contenders had dropped out of the race. Kasich then hit a high of 22.5% behind Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Trump.
As The Daily Wire reported:
Kasich, as governor of Ohio, willfully and unilaterally implemented Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in his state, an optional program. He received criticism from conservatives in the state for supporting the healthcare law that created numerous problems in the healthcare industry and was opposed by every Republican in the Senate when it was passed during President Barack Obama’s first term.
Kasich still claims to be a Republican, and ran for president in 2016. He finished second behind Trump, but only because he didn’t drop out when he failed to get delegates like most candidates. By staying in, he ended up being a non-Trump option.
The Lincoln Project did not immediately respond to a request for comment.