By no stretch of the imagination has the Lincoln Project ever been the "foremost pro-democracy organization in the United States". And if Rick Wilson was ever a "principled Republican" for three days straight I'll eat my hat.
The foremost pro-democracy organization in the United States belongs to the Democratic Party, of which I have been a
member my entire adult life.
The Lincoln Project is an advertising company staffed by mountebanks which
cranked out slick, Trump-bashing ads that tickled the pleasure centers of way
too many credulous Liberals and made the lads and lasses at MSNBC swoon back
in the day.
...there should be one fact that stands out bold and clear to anyone who
has eyes to see: that the staggering amount of free publicity and hard
cash lavished on the Lincoln Project on the theory that their unique
insights into the Republican mind would pay big dividends for the
Democrats was a complete bust. That, outside of the tiny circle of
Never Trump Republicans who seem to exist almost entirely on teevee and
Twitter -- surprise! -- neither the tens of millions of dollars that
credulous Liberals poured into the Lincoln Project...
...nor the Liberal Political PornHub videos they cranked out budged even
a fraction of the Republican base one inch...
And yet you will remember that so many of our fair-weather Liberals allies
insisted that the Lincoln Lads basically won the 2020 election for Joe Biden
despite incontestable evidence to the contrary.
If you needed a bylined writer to tell you bitter truths, you could've heeded
the wise words
Charlie Pierce:
The Lincoln Project Didn't Move 10 Votes in This Election
Never Trump conservatives are about as relevant to the actual election
results this year as are the Whigs or the Free Soil Party.
Or you could've read
The Hill, although it's kind of a trash publication so I can understand why you might
blow them off --
Lack of influence means it's time to dismiss the Lincoln Project
-- but the basic electoral math that they buried halfway down the column is
not in dispute.
During their time in the sun they even scammed their way into a glow-up from
60 Minutes, back when that meant something. Later, when the various scandals the Lincoln Lads were drowning in broke into the open, 60 Minutes had to, uh, revise their
assessment.
But these veteran grifters hung on like herpes because, as America's most famous capitalist philosopher, Phineas Taylor Barnum, allegedly observed, there's a sucker born every minute.
Today Rick Wilson strokes his beard ponderously and ponders what in the world
happened to his Republican party?
Spoiler: Cynical, "Toss the bigots and imbeciles red meat until the
burst and then stampede 'em to the polls" Republican operatives like Rick
Wilson are what happened to the Republican party.
As you contemplate the following screen-shots, bear in mind that Nixon's
Southern Strategy, Reagan's "Welfare Queen" ideology, Limbaugh's "Feminazis,
Libtards and Barack the Magic Negro" vocabulary and Gingrich's
slash-burn-and-relentlessly-demonize politics are the filthy, racist waters
that spawned Mr. Rick Wilson.
And that, until five minutes ago, profiting handsomely by further toxifying those filthy, racist waters has been his life's work.
But now...
Since almost no one be me cares about any of this, I have learned to content myself by being grimly entertained by listening to Wilson continuing to use his real superpower -- reptilian amoral flexibility -- to seamlessly transition from being a paid, Right-wing political hitman who gleefully took the filthy lucre of crackpot Conservative billionaires and used the unlimited crackpot-billionaire funded resources available on the Right to help build a Republican doomsday...
...to landing squarely on my "No Fair Remembering Stuff" podcast corner (but isn't everybody?) dressed up as Mr. "Holy shit! You mean the Republican Party has been full of Republicans all along!!" guy.
And the funniest part of all of this? Wilson (and pretty much every other Never Trumper) blocked me years ago specifically for promiscuously and publicly remembering the very same monstrous past of the Republican party that he is now "uncovering".
However far they try to distance themselves from the unholy monster they
created, most Never Trumpers simply cannot endure more than a few minutes of
critiquing the insanity of their recently former party without taking an
awkward, swerving detour down "But the Democrats..." boulevard.
For, y'know, "balance".
Even if they have to make shit up, this ritual mating-call-and-response of
Beltway respectability is wired so deeply into their psyches that, like Roger
Rabbit and "Shave and a Hair-Cut", they are powerless to resist the
minty-fresh dopamine hit of a well-placed "Both Sides Do It".
Observe as we join a conversation already in progress among the Lincoln Lads
-- Reed Galen and Lincoln Project Senior Advisors Trygve Olson and Jeff Timmer
-- as they are sharing their thoughts on the recent tragic Nashville school
shooting
Olsen: And here's the thing about it at the end of the
day. Most of those deaths are caused by the exact same weapon.
It's not like they're using a pump action 12 gauge and going into schools
and doing this. It's the same gun. And at some point it has to
stop. And honestly that Boebert woman just drives me nuts,
right? Like, she has all these pictures of herself and their kids, all
armed up.
We're it within my power I would bar every pundit on Earth from ever using
phrases like "at some point it has to stop" since they're lazy and
meaningless. At some point every person dies. At some point the
sun will burn out. So what? But other than that, I have no
objections. To this point the conversation had been clear,
fact-based and cited specific statistics and policies.
Galen: As did the member of congress who represents Nashville.
Olsen: Right. And it's like, I just wonder what their
parents were like that they were teaching them that about guns. I
mean, clearly they weren't going to hunter safety in western
Wisconsin. Like, it's just asinine. And the other thing is,
though, about 400 people [in Las Vegas] might be a statistic, Jeff, but
every single one of those people is the most important person in the world
to someone who's left in this world dealing with it. And in the case
of those three kids [in Nashville] they were the most important person in
the world for at least two people; their parents.
Once again, no objections. But then...
Olsen: But, y'know, the Left doesn't do itself any favors in this either, Reed.
Strap in because now we're taking that hard, non sequitur pivot away
from verifiable statistics and identifiable policies and people, and into the
"Both Sides Do It" land of straw men and sweeping, bullshit generalizations
about "the Left".
Olsen: Because most of them don't understand, y'know, when
they get talking about guns and whatever, they don't want to have a
reasonable conversation about it either.
Suddenly, Olsen is somehow a fucking expert on what "most" of us on the
Left do and do not understand about "guns and whatever".
Suddenly, Olsen can infallibly intuit that we
"don't want to have a reasonable conversation" about guns.
Olsen: Y'know, a lot of them -- this is where the cultural
differences matter, right? They're not, like, differentiating between
somebody's 12 gauge they use to go out and hunt ducks or even a 9 millimeter
that they're keeping in their house that they like to go and do some sport
shooting with and have for security that they keep in a locked box, and AR's
with, y'know, hollow point bullets. And so you don't get a reasonable
conversation about it.
"a lot of them"...
"they'renot, like, differentiating"...
And that's why "you don't get a reasonable conversation about it."
Fuck you, Olsen.
Olsen: I think, y'know, there are things that could be done,
but I think at the end of the day some of this starts, quite frankly -- and
this is what's so irresponsible about people like Boebert -- responsible gun
owners making sure their kids -- and most of them do... 99.9999999 percent
of them -- that they're responsible and that they're not promoting this
weaponized culture.
Here's a static for you, Olsen. Clowns like you have waving the myth
of "responsible gun owners" in the faces of unreasonable Liberals
like me for at least a generation. We're supposed to sit down and shut
up because "at some point" these
"responsible gun owners" were surely going to put an end to the
massacres is some inexplicable but definitely responsible manner.
Which means that in the time we stoopid, irresponsible Liberals (who
can't differentiate between a AR-15 and a slingshot) have been waiting for
your imaginary "responsible gun owners" to step up and and at least
begin doing something, there are American children have survived
gun massacres, grown up and
had kids of their own.
And yet, after all this time. these "responsible gun owners" are still nowhere to be found. Hey, here's an idea! Perhaps
you could prevail on your hunting friends to gather the greatest wilderness
trackers in American to track them down and bring out of hiding to get this
working on this extremely serious problem.
Or perhaps instead it is time for clowns like you to stop telling everyone
else to keep waiting for the Responsible Gun Owner Fairy to come in the night
while we sleep and put Responsible Gun Control Policies under our
pillows.
Perhaps instead the time has come for you to sit down and shut
up and let the rest of us have a crack at the problem.
At this point, Galen grabs the wheel and awkwardly tries to steer the Lincoln
Lads out of the swerve. Not by pushing back or pointing out how asinine
his colleagues remarks had been, but instead...
Galen: But this is part of what I would call the authoritarian
movement that Trump leads...
FYI, the beginning of every Lincoln Lad podcast begins the same way.
Hey everybody it's Reed. Before we get started, I just want to
remind everyone that the fight that we're facing is
not about Right versus Left.
And it's not about Republicans versus Democrats.
Because who needs an actual Liberal media when you have Tom Nichols and
Charlie Sykes?
Because while Democrats were just standing around not winning and never
winning and just generally sucking at winning, and the
Lincoln Project
and The Bulwark were out there -- repeatedly and single-handedly --
saving democracy!
Because the Lincoln Lads and The Bulwark really know how to get in
Republican's heads, man! I mean, why can't the DNC hook up with them and
let Rick Wilson orchestrate everything?
I mean, after all, is was the Lincoln Lads and The Bulwark
"that got Biden elected".
For the record, these are not my sentiments. My analysis and critiques
of the Lincoln Lads and The Bulwarkare marbled throughout the last seven years of this blog -- from the invention of the Lincoln Lads and The Bulwark by MSNBC, to the ongoing and lavish sponsorship of the Lincoln Lads and The Bulwark by MSNBC to, finally, the colonization of MSNBC by employees of the Lincoln Lads and The Bulwark.
No, these are the sentiments of the actress Jane Lynch.
The spectacular Jane Lynch (Glee, Party Down) joins Tim and Sarah this week, and turns out she’s a huge fan of Never Trumpers!
Which, I
suspect,also reflects the beliefs of a large number of Coastal Liberal elites. Which is why we can stop looking to them for any support in creating an actual
Liberal media in this country.
Jane Lynch is a fine actress whose work I enjoy a great deal. She has
also ingested wholesale all the self-aggrandizing bullshit the Lincoln Lads
and The Bulwark are constantly pumping out. Self-aggrandizing bullshit
which, thanks to their MSNBC benefactors, now reaches millions of liberals
every week, including our Coastal Liberal elites.
So why bother to build an actual Liberal media when its so much easier to just job it out the Lincoln Lads and The Bulwark and cut them large checks whenever they need it?
After all, the Lincoln Lads proved that a small group of very determined people could change the tide of history.
And the reason I know that is true is because...uh...well...because veteran Republican charlatan and Lincoln Lad co-founder Rick Wilson says so:
"One thing we proved at the Lincoln Project was a small group of very determined people could change the tide of history." -- Rick Wilson
There are so many things I learned from listening to just a leeetle bit of
Rick Wilson's podcast.
First, despite the fact that Democrats retaking the House in 2018 happened
before the Lincoln Project existed, and despite the fact that there is no
evidence that Lincoln Lads moved a single vote in 2020, and despite the fact
that they have been mired in scandal and controversy ever since, and despite
the fact that their 2020 "Tiki Torch"
stunt backfired horribly
and may have tipped the Virginia gubernatorial election to Glenn Younkin --
Lincoln Project co-founder: Stunt at Youngkin event ‘recklessly
stupid’
Steve Schmidt, the co-founder of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln
Project, slammed the recent tiki torch stunt pulled by the organization
ahead of the Virginia gubernatorial election, calling it “recklessly
stupid.”
“I thought the action was recklessly stupid. It was dishonest and cheap.
It is exactly the wrong way to approach the fight against a real fascist
movement, against extremist elements. It showed appalling judgment by the
day-to-day management and leadership of The Lincoln Project,” Schmidt said
on Wednesday during an interview on “America at a Crossroads.”...
-- despite all of that, the Lincoln Project's extremely revised version of history gets more
grandiose by the hour. From the trailer for Rick Wilson's The Enemies List
"One thing we proved at the Lincoln Project was a small group of very
determined people could change the tide of history."
So, by the driftglass calendar -- hey look! -- they're right on
schedule:
And for those credulous Liberals out there who swore they were bedding down
with Kevin Costner only to wake up to find it'd been Slippin' Jimmy McGill all
along --
-- I did try to warn you.
Over and over and over and over again.
But as the Lincoln Lad's began to fade into the swarm-o-gnats background noise
of American politics, I began to lose interest. I was starting to wear
holes in the soles of my "I Told You So" shoes from all the "I Fucking Well
Warned Them" dancing I've been doing these past several years, so I sent them
off to the cobbler and forgot about them.
Until this caught my eye:
Not Left Or Right But Forward
Rick Wilson's The Enemies List
Oh my.
So slipped on a pair of "I Told You So" socks (they'll do in a
pinch), warmed up the Philco and gave ol' Rick a listen.
And oh my.
Miles Taylor, co-founder of Forward: Really what we want to
do is go run genuinely independent candidates, especially in places that
are not competitive. So think deep red districts where MAGA
has a chokehold over an area of the country, and where Democrats have no
hope of beating an extremist.
driftglass: Hold up for a moment. The
co-founder of Forward is telling me, explicitly, that Forward
is going after Republican seats in places Democrats can't win.
Taylor: We wanna go run a common sense, principled leader to try to
shake those districts up around the country. So really, were excited
about that...
Taylor: The last data point I'll provide you is, people are
pretty blown away to find out that about 70% of the races in this country
are uncontested... That's pretty stupid. That's just pretty
fucking stupid.
driftglass: 70%! Holy Hannah, that's a lot! So
before we slide past that Forward Party talking point, let's look at the
invisible bridge Mr. Taylor has to scamper across unnoticed to get from
"deep red districts where MAGA has a chokehold over an area of the
country, and where Democrats have no hope of beating an extremist"
to "70% of the races in this country are uncontested".
The deep, red chokehold district thingie seems to be clearly
implying congressional districts, which if 70% of those are unopposed, well , as the kids say, Big if True!
So there are 435 voting members in the House of Representatives. An
70% of that that would be ... let's see ... round up to the nearest whole
number ... and we get ... 305. Wow! Do 305 House seats
really go uncontested in every election?
[In 2022] There are 16 incumbents - 13 Republicans and three Democrats -
that have the ballot all to themselves. Their only opposition would be via
write-in, where allowed.
In 2020, this number was 11, split more evenly with six Republicans and
five Democrats.
driftglass: So not 305. Barely a fraction of a
fraction of 305. Because when the Forward party mouthpieces trot out
this number, they always fail to emphasize that it refers to about
all elections for all offices in the United States. That includes races for things like
school boards, alderpersons and city councilors, water reclamation
commissioners, county judges and mosquito abatement district
directors.
Well, if the Forward Party's big plan to shake loose the MAGA chokehold on
American politics is to run candidates for mine inspector or Clerk of the
Peace, more power to them, I suppose. But that sure doesn't sound like
the plan.
Mr. Taylor continues.
Taylor: But at the same time, that means teaming up with the Good
Guys against the Bad Guys.
In virtually every piece of Forward propaganda I've ever read, whether from
the party's social media accounts or from individual hype-men like Andrew
Yang, the "good guys" are always the Forward Party, and the Bad Guys
are always the Republican and Democratic parties.
Always Both Sides. Always the K'rupt
Duopoly.
So...who are the other good guys with whom Mr. Taylor proposed that the
Forwardists team up with?
Taylor: So...and, right now, the... the Democratic Party is the one
that's the bulwark protecting democracy.
driftglass: Wow. I feel a great disturbance in the
Force, as if millions of Forward Party "Overthrow the K'rupt Duopoly!"
Tweets are about to vanish like farts in a firestorm.
But maybe I misunderstood. Because I'm stupid like that. Please
continue gentlemen.
Rick Wilson: Well that's... that is, y'know, one of the
big... the big challenges of a third party is making sure you're targeting
it in a way that doesn't advantage the side that wants to break
democracy. That doesn't give, y'know... that doesn't split off uh...
and... and give moderate Republicans a place to run to if they should be
voting for uh, y'know, uh a Democratic in a competitive seat like
that. ... How do you make sure that... that if one side of the
political equation right now in the Republican party wants to basically
break democracy, how do you not do more damage in that
thing. Sounds like you guys are trying to calibrate that in a way
that meets that challenge.
driftglass: Not according to virtually every piece of Forward
Party Both Siderist "Overthrow the K'rupt Duopoly!" agitprop I've seen
to-date.
Taylor: Well, yeah, it's, y'know, it's the traditional spoiler
argument. But you go back to that [misleading, bullshit] stat that I
just said. 70% of races are uncontested. The "system" is
pretty fucking spoiled as it is. So, y'know, when it comes to the
MAGA movement, ideally we would attract a lot of middle-of-the-road
Conservatives over to our cause and deprive the GOP of the votes they need
to have a MAGA supermajority.
Did you see the bait? "70% of races are uncontested."
Did you see the switch? "So... when it comes to the MAGA movement."
Come on man, if you're a Conservative party, why not just say you're
a Conservative party? Why not articulate the Conservative policies
that you think would attract imaginary middle-of-the-road Conservatives?
Taylor: And we've been seeing that. We've been seeing
disaffected Republicans come our direction in droves.
driftglass: Define "droves".
driftglass: See also "The Bush-Belly Sneetches". Now observe closely as Mr. Taylor blows up his own talking point.
Taylor: But we're also seeing that with disaffected Democrats. I mean look, there are super, super blue districts that even the
Democratic party says,
"Oh man, we've gotta get rid of some of these people and put some
normal folks in."
driftglass: You know, I'm on the Sekrit Democratic Party
Burn Book Mailing List and so far I've not heard any of this,
but seeing as Miles Taylor's last job was [checks notes]
"Chief Of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security under Trump"
maybe the Democratic Party leadership trusts him enough to have passed along
to him some super secret bitching that they've not shared with the rest of
us.
The rest of the conversation takes the same, schizophrenic downhill tumble
that all conversations between recently-former Republicans seem to take,
because that's the way they're wired. They quickly forget that the
MAGA GOP are now the "bad guys" and regress back into 2015 Beltway media
talking points about the Extremes on Both Sides.
Wilson: When folks come to you and say
"We don't like what the Republicans here are doing" and
"We don't like what the Democrats here are doing" and they ask you
the hard question ... "What do you believe in?" ... You can get people to
describe their ideological takes in a few sentences for most Republicans
and for most Democrats.
driftglass: Taylor goes on the reassure Wilson that his Forward
Party definitely has an answer to that question. And the answer
is so easy and obvious! The Forward Party believes... what the "silent
majority" of Americans believe! All of that common sense centrist
stuff that "independents" believe!
For example, on climate change Taylor explains that the Extreme Left which
believes in stopping every engine on Earth right now or whatever, and the
Extreme Right who think its all a hoax. And the Forward Party is
straight up the Sensible Center!
Or take abortion, which the Extreme Left yadda yadda and the Extreme Right
yadda yadda. And the Forward Party is once again on the side of the silent
majority!
Except, or course, Taylor is full shit.
Those "Extreme Right" positions he describes are ones the
actual Republican Party actually supports and,
as with gutting Roe v. Wade, has used its political power to enact.
Whereas the "Extreme Left" positions he describes have zero support within
the Democratic Party, and the Sensible Centrist policies he lays out are
basically the Democratic Party platform.
It's exactly the same game of ideological Three Card Monte that every third
party scam tries to run, that Very Serious Conservative frauds like David
Brooks have been playing for decades, and which Jonathan Chait brutally
deconstructed
back in 2016:
David Brooks and the Intellectual Collapse of the Center:
...
But even if you accept this very strange notion of the political
alignment in Trump’s Washington, it raises a question Brooks is not
prepared to answer. If his objection on the left lies with the “Sanders
socialism,” then isn’t there an appealing centrist lying to the right of
that? A moderate who favors market-oriented solutions that bring
together business and labor, who welcomes empiricism, and is willing to
compromise? A politician who has led the Democratic party for the last
eight years and, in fact, is still the sitting president of the United
States right now?
One might think so. But Brooks spent the last eight years defining the
center as something Obama was not. It didn’t matter that Obama supported
a health-care plan first devised by Mitt Romney, or a cap-and-trade plan
endorsed by John McCain. Brooks nestled himself into the territory
between Obama and the angry, no-compromise Republicans who were shutting
down government and boycotting all negotiations with the president. If
Obama endorsed the policies Brooks preferred, he would simply pretend
that Obama had not proposed them. Indeed, one of the most common genres
of David Brooks column was a sad lament that neither party would endorse
policies that in fact Obama had explicitly and publicly called
for...
But the Sensible Centrist lie will never die so long as there are enough
pundits, enough Republicans on the run from their past and enough cowardly
fence-straddlers to prop it up.
Wilson: I think the type of voters you're talking about are
the types we've targeted at Lincoln for the past three years. ...
But there is a frustration growing -- and this is a frustration that
both parties, y'know, have a responsibility for -- that
both parties have become this sort of like code-worded only, Burger
King versus McDonald's fight. It's Cokes versus Pepsi... And
while there's an entertainment complex built up pushing both those
narratives, it's unsatisfactory with a lot of people.
Wilson [after talking about how ludicrous and destructive the
re-invented GOP is with hobgoblins like Boebert and Greene leading the
way]: The loudest voice in the room They're going to scream
louder. They're going to cause more trouble. They're going to
engage in the "owning of the Libs". The ritual bullshit and all
that.
And... and, look, The Squad on the other side is... is... plays a
similar...
driftglass: Then Wilson catches himself, as if suddenly
remembering that he's on a live mic, that Both Siderism has become
naughtybad, and that that asshole driftglass is probably listening and may
blog about it.
Wilson: And I'm not a Both Sidesism guy! I'm
really not! But I know as a former Republican
strategist, that every day that the Squad is talking it's a gift for the
Republican party to the normies still in the GOP.
driftglass: The problem that Wilson in describing -- and that he
is definitely Both Sidesing -- has nothing to do with anything
that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ayanna Pressley or any other Democratic
back-bencher might say on any given day.
The problem Wilson is describing is the ability of an integrated
Conservative Media Hate machine to take any goofy thing that
any Democrat might say on any given day of out of context and
amplify it a zillion times over social media, over 10,000 radio stations and
100 top-rated podcasts and three cable teevee networks and
who-knows-how-many Evangelical church pulpits. Scream that message day
and night until they bludgeon the mainstream press into covering it as
"news".
Wilson knows all of this perfectly well since for decades he made a handsome
living feeding that Hate Machine.
Wilson: You're told, if you wanna be in this party you've
gotta all this crazy shit. Right now, if you want to be a Republican
you have to say January 6th was a tourist visit and Donald Trump is the
legitimate president and Joe Biden cheated to win. You have to say
that essentially.
driftglass: But Wilson just can't help himself.
Wilson: And I think that those shit-tests that go on inside
both parties now...
driftglass: Now I'm bored. But I would also like to thank
everyone who helped us turn "Both Siderism" into such filthy expletive a
dirty that even committed Both Siderists now feel the need to stop in the
middle of some patently ridiculous false equivalence to explain that they
not really, really a Both Siderist.
OK. One more
Taylor: I would stake out a different position than you a
little bit on the Both Sidesism. I am a Both Sideser.
Not that both sides are equally as bad at the moment. Certainly my
[very recently] former party, the Republican Party, represents the
greatest threat to democracy... But very close friends at the
highest levels of the Biden White House have said they have a deep-seated
fear...
And I'm done.
Well, almost done. Because as long as I'm here at Rick Wilson's dump,
poshotting specific rodents on a specific pile of debris, seems a shame not to
widen the aperture and get a look at the lay of the land.
So, in addition to coddling recently-former Republican Both Siderists and
whitewashing the Lincoln Projects' brief, scandal-plagued history into a
heroic saga of the Lincoln Lads single-handedly "chang[ing] the tide of history" what
else does this Rick Wilson fella get up to on his podcast?
Rick pledes to his listeners that he will fearlessly interview [checks
notes] most of the same Never Trumpers who have gobbled up the media
spotlight for the past six years. Like Lincoln Project co-founder Reed
Galen! And Lincoln Project guy Stuart Stevens! And Lincoln Project
adjacent guy George Conway! Former Lincoln Project guy (who bailed
once the waves of scandal repeatedly capsized the Lincoln Project) who is
now also Lincoln Project adjacent guy -- and who also has his own
podcast! -- Michael Steele. And friend of the Lincoln Project, Molly
Jong Fast!
But when he's not interviewin', Rick promises listeners he will
speak his mind!
Or issue various "stern warnings"!
Or sometimes he just "goes off"!
Here are a sampling of blurbs for various episodes. See if you can
spot the pattern (emhasis added where I would read this in my scariest "In a
world..." voice.)
"Listen to find out who Rick is blasting this episode"!!!
And
"Rick puts someone on The Enemies List and calls it
a permanent entry. Listen to find out who"!!!
And:
"Listen to find out who Rick is targeting for the list"!!!
And:
"Rick adds another group to The Enemies List.
Listen to find out who."!!!
And:
"Rick has a double entry on this episode's Enemies List. Listen to find out who is the lucky pair."!!!
And:
"Listen to find out who Rick is targeting for the list."!!!
And:
"And, of course,
you won't want to miss who gets put on The Enemies List."!!!
And
"Rick adds another name to The Enemies List.
Listen to find out who makes the unfortunate cut this episode."
!!!
Rick Wilson: Internet tough guy.
There are also various typos which I consider to be hilarious in their own
right because I am low and perverse.
"Every conceivable standard of conduct, propriety, ethics and governance was
shattered by the Lincoln Project board."
-- Steve Schmidt, Lincoln Project co-founder.
Part of me thinks that, like Michelangelo contemplating a fresh slab of
marble, I should just circle the following Tweets for a year or two, looking
at every angle, contemplating them in all their perfection, and letting the
underlying truths emerge before picking up my hammer and chisel..
8/ the
@ProjectLincoln. Before the organization started
@TheRickWilson
set up a GO Fund me to make a movie π₯ about Trump. He raised tens of
thousands of dollars π΅ and never made the movie. I asked him about it 500
times. No movie. I was not comfortable with this. It is a big
The reason
@ProjectLincoln
was able to extract millions from gullible liberals -- to say nothing of
the petty fraud and theft of Rick Wilson for this film -- is
@GoFundMe,
@JoyAnnReid,
@JoeNBC kept
endorsing and glorifying them, so liberals assumed they should keep giving
cash.
But I don't have a mountain demesne to which I can retreat because I'm
not a grifting douchebag who suckers credulous dopes out of their
cash.
Nor do have I a year or two to fiddlefuck around while I live off the interest
of the large pile of cash which the aforementioned credulous dopes have handed
me. There is no endowment or dark money war chest or internet
zillionaire benefactor. There are no cable news corporations who
incorporated me into their business plan and now invest millions in free
publicity every month to promote this little blog of mine.
That tip jar you see at the bottom of these posts? That's it.
But with that tip jar (and the permanently low profile this blog is going to
have until the day they drag me outta here) comes a certain freedom.
Here, I am at liberty to say pretty much whatever I want to say (within the
editorial limits I set for myself) knowing that, from time to time, I am going
to piss off a nontrivial percentage of my readers and my political
"allies".
Which is a fair bargain. And why, when I saw that not only was
grifting sleazebag (and former Liberal media darling) Steve Schmidt using
all of this words to vivisect the grifting sleazebags (and
former and current Liberal media darlings) of the Lincoln Project including
grifting sleazebag (and Liberal media darling) Rick Wilson...
...but that grifting Bolshi Freedom Troll (and former Liberal media
darling) Glenn Greenwald was using grifting sleazebag Steve Schmidt's words to
bludgeon the Lincoln Lads and the MSNBC whelping box that spawned them...
...well let's just say that I smiled.
Bitterly, but I smiled.
A lot.
I had all the feels, as the kids say, because this was the crossover "Why Do
Otherwise Intelligent People Keep Falling For This Shit" episode I never
expected.
And the fact that I had to go to a bottom-of-the-wingnut-barrel schlock shop
like Twitchy to retrieve this stuff (no link because fuck 'em) --
‘WORST con artists’: Glenn Greenwald takes a cue from Steve Schmidt
OUTING The Lincoln Project and DECIMATES Rick Wilson
-- because everyone involved in the story blocked me years ago for the high
crime of remembering their inconvenient pasts?
My smile just kept getting bigger.
You longtime readers can probably fill in the rest of the story, but for the
newer arrivals, our tale begins way back during the Obama administration, when
Bolshi Freedom Troll Glenn Greenwald was beloved by many on the Left and in the media because
Snowden and documents and Russia and "Obama is worse than Bush!" and it was in
all the papers, so you can read all about it somewhere else.
Or just rent the shitty movie.
Anyway, almost immediately after Greenwald became the World's Greatest
Journalist and before his internet sugar daddy cut him a check for a quarter
of a billion dollars, something about the many, bilious diatribes Greenwald
was cranking out on a daily basis began to stink.
Greenwald had a whole shelf
of ideological axes to grind and petty vengeances to enact, and now he had the
clout to do it. And he did. Insufferably. Incessantly.
He bent the truth with abandon and then broke it. Went to the Dudgeon Outlet Mall and bought the highest dudgeon he could find and used it at an indignation
decibel level that could knock satellites from their orbits to rail against
anyone who did not meet his standards of ideological and journalistic purity
-- standards which he himself freely and frequent broke.
And woe betide the poor fool who noticed and wrote about Spleenwald's lies and
hypocrisy.
Well dear readers, I was one of those benighted, woe betided fools, who saw
what was going on in plain sight, wrote about it, and got absolutely slagged
for it by my "allies".
Overnight I was no longer a Liberal in good
standing. I was a drooling, jackbooted fascist. A corporatist
shill. An "Obot". The blowback was swift, severe and
material...but I kept writing while a whole lot of much more connected Liberal
writers with steady gigs in the legacy media kept their heads down and said
little or nothing because it wasn't worth getting the Greenwald horde on their
asses.
Such are the perils and privileges of being an indy writer, beholden to
no one.
Then Glenn started heading off the deep, deep end in exactly the ways I
had predicted, and in a manner that his fan boys could no longer ignore.
Showing up on Fox News. Whoring for Tucker Carlson's White Power
Hour. Yucking it up with Laura Ingraham. And so forth. And
gradually his mob of avenging Purity Angels stopped showing up at my place and
calling me a Nazi.
Search the blog for "Greenwald" and you'll find all of it.
Not terribly much later, Donald Trump began his steady rise to power in the
Republican Party. And while
drooling, jackbooted, fascist "Obot"s crackpot Liberal
alarmists like me were warning that Trump was grotesque end product of decades
of Republican Southern Strategy politics come to claim his throne -- that he
was the GOP base made manifest -- all the savvy Conservative political
havers-of-opinions like David "It's Gonna Be Rubio!" Brooks and streetwise GOP
political arsonists-for-hire like Rick Wilson reassured the public that the
nomination and election of Donald Trump was utterly impossible.
Greetings, Donald Trump super fans. I am a member of the GOP
establishment. I’m writing to tell you that, no matter how much you wish
it otherwise, the Donald Trump candidacy is almost over.
Don’t be fooled by Trump’s double-digit lead in a new poll: He is not
going to win. He’s not going to win the primary. He’s not going to win the
general. He’s not going to win a third-party bid. Sure, he can damage the
GOP ticket badly enough to guarantee Hillary’s election, but he can’t win.
He’s too flawed, too liberal, too undisciplined and too afflicted with
verbal dysentery when even slightly provoked. He lacks the fundamental
presence and gravitas of a commander-in-chief.
Donald Trump is not running a real campaign. He is working the phones,
stirring the pot and using the media ecosystem to its fullest. Soon, the
bolder members of the field will follow Rick Perry, Marco Rubio and Jeb
Bush in making harder and more decisive strokes against him. Unlike Trump,
they’ll use real oppo, tested and targeted messages—ads built not just to
cut, but to kill. They’ll break his operational tempo, get inside his OODA
loop and turn his circus into a crispy ruin. It’s what real campaigns
do....
Even if it means (and it well may) that Hillary Clinton sits in the White
House, names 3 or 4 Supreme Court justices and lets Bill run around the
East Wing molesting the help, you’re going to teach the hated
Establishment a lesson by becoming Trump Super Fans, even if he runs as a
third party candidate and guarantees Her victory...
And just as they had been for decades about every other Republican atrocity,
all the Very Serious Conservative havers-of-opinions and all
the GOP political arsonists-turned-Never-Trumper and all the savvy
mainstream media political pundits were wrong, wrong, fuckity wrong about
Trump. They watched -- stunned and unbelieving -- as the racist base of
the Republican party that GOP leadership and media had so carefully cultivated
did exactly what we crackpot alarmist Liberals had been warning
for decades that they would eventually do: hoist a monster of their own making
up on their shoulders and carry him to the White House.
At this point in our story it is terribly important to step back and
contemplate how thoroughgoing the failure of institutional media and
Conservatives leadership had been up to the day Trump was elected. How
gleefully they had all jumped on the "But Her Emails" bash Hillary bandwagon
because they believed it was impossible for her to lose.
The point being that this was not the first catastrophic institutional failure
of the national media and Conservative elites. Far from it. In
fact, the savvy havers-of-opinions who were caught flat-footed by the rise of
Trump were pretty much the same savvy havers-of-opinions who were caught
flat-footed by the collapse of the Bush administration, and flat-footed by the
Fake Tea Party once they dropped their masks. Over and over again they
showed themselves to be so pot-committed to their reassuring fairy tales of
who they wished Republicans to be that they actively refused to see who
Republicans actually were until something big and scary kicked in their doors
and grabbed them by the throat.
And even then, it was unimaginable that they would turn for advice and council
to the one group of people who have actually been right about the Right all
along. The dirty hippies. Once again, the savvy havers-of-opinions
were so pot-committed to their campfire tall tales of Liberals as feckless
dopes and crackpot alarmists that it was institutionally inconceivable to them
that we dirty hippies might be able to explain how Trump came to
be.
It would also be institutionally dangerous to give the dirty hippies a
national platform because of our terrible habit of Remembering Inconvenient
Stuff.
It just wouldn't do to have some dirty hippie on a Sunday morning
Power Panel explaining that Trump was not a black swan event, but the
end-product of 50 years of cynical Republican political and media strategies
and a willingness on the part of a complicit national media --
including every sniveling fucker on this Power Panel -- to look
the other way or "Both Sides" every Republican act of depravity.
Nope, that wouldn't do. Wouldn't do at all. And since they control
the cameras, media corporations just cooked up a narrative that suited their
corporate interests. They bankrolled Trump voter whisperers like Salina
Zito to speak to them of "economic anxiety". They invented the entirely
new genre of journalistic fiction that one wag refers to as Magic Ruralism and dispatched their Zeitgeist
Action News vans to the interior of the American continent to interview Real
Murricans in diner after diner after diner after diner.
They also repurposed their existing assets.
Almost overnight Joe Scarborough went from being Trump Fluffer #1 to Mr. Trump
Truth Teller Guy #1 Who Had Never, Ever Been a Trump Supporter. We dirty
hippies bellowed our outrage as loudly as our tiny platforms would allow, but
when you're a celebrity (and you control the cameras) they let you do stuff
like that.
Almost overnight Bill Kristol went from being a smirking Conservative
ghoul and unreconstructed Iraq War pimp famous for being catastrophically
wrong about everything (Maddow on MSNBC in 2014), to rambling Uncle Billy, a valued MSNBC contributor who said mean
things about Trump, oh and by the way we're starting a new media company called
The Bulwark you should check it out!
Almost overnight Charlie Sykes went from being Wisconsin's Rush Limbaugh
to trusted MSNBC contributor and Man Who Is Perpetually Shocked At How The GOP
Completely Lost Its Mind Overnight, oh and by the way I'm part of a new media
company called The Bulwark you should check it out!
Almost overnight MSNBC became the preeminent Reputation Laundromat for outcast
Republicans and unemployed Conservative pundits, as long as they stuck
more-or-less to the same script. That the GOP had suddenly and
spontaneously lost its mind in 2016. That no one could have seen it
coming. And that none of the Conservatives who were now employees of
MSNBC were in any meaningful way responsible for what their party had
become.
If you were a Bush regime dead ender like Nicolle Wallace or Steve Schmidt, or
a friend of theirs like Matthew Dowd, or a fellow traveler like Michael
Steele, a place would be found for you in the budget and at the table.
And in this new order it wouldn't do to have some mouthy dirty hippie
confusing things by showing up with receipts.
Wouldn't do at all.
And once the dramatis personae had been cast and seats at the table
filled, the ritual among these very recently-former Republicans became a
contest to see who could outdo whom in calling Trump a shithead and calling
his "followers" racist morons without letting on that these were
the same racist morons that these recently-former Republicans had spent
their careers cultivating and exploiting.
A couple of people who excelled at calling Trump a shithead and calling his
"followers" racist morons were Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt, who were
packaged and sold to cable news audiences as canny, street fighting campaign
veterans who knew how to win!win!win! despite the fact that their candidates
kept losing. Their candidates for president lost in 2008 and 2012, and
in the 2016 GOP primaries all of their show ponies got wiped out and glue
factoried.
But none of that mattered. Because despite the fact that Democrats
came roaring back in 2018, taking the House and the Senate thanks almost
entirely to Democratic women and minorities working their asses off and
organizing, the new mainstream media political fairy tale was that since
Democrats are irredeemably and
holistically bad at politics, and since Trump must be defeated, the republic was
dooooomed unless Democrats wisely stepped aside and let all of
these newly ascendant recently-former Republicans tell them how to run things.
These are the same recently-former Republicans who had by now -- surprise! --
colonized cable news and national newspapers, and built their own media
corporations like The Bulwark thanks to large infusions of cash from
wealthy benefactors and glowing saturation coverage by MSNBC. All of
which served only to amplify the message of
"Democrats have a sacred responsibility to the future of the nation to
immediately stop being Democrats and start aggressively courting
phantom independents and reasonable Republicans" until it just about drowned everything else out.
And so, having carefully prepared a rich, fertile loam of peril and the incessant negging of Democrats as
hapless fiddlefucks who don't know anything about the Real Murrica beyond Berkley
and Swope Park, a for-profit advertising agency
consisting of recently unemployed Republican shit-slingers, con men and
perverts was seeded, watered and fertilized by a cable teevee network which
was now dominated by the voices of recently-former Republicans.
And thus The Lincoln Project was born.
The Lincoln Lads specialized in shunting the vast sums of money they were raking in to
marketing and production companies owned by Lincoln Lad board members.
Out the other end of that pipeline came slick 30- and 60-second commercials
which called Donald Trump a lying scumbag and the "credulous boomer rubes" who
supported him stupid.
At this point I am obliged by Clio, the Muse of History to mention that at no point in
the entire lifespan of the Lincoln Project have any one any of the Lincoln Lads generated a original single idea or observation that Liberals hadn't already had and made over and
over and over again for decades. However, what we Liberal never had
during all of that time (and never will have) were cable news outlets and
major American newspapers willing to carry our often salty critiques of
the Republican party, every day, for years, for free.
We thundered and sermonized and parodied and discoursed as loudly as out tiny
platforms permitted. We said "fuck" a lot and spilled billions of pixels
over the course of decades but to no avail. We were (and are)
pariahs. Nobody wanted to hear it. Everyone wanted us alarmist
crackpots to STFU and go away.
Back-to-back, the Lincoln Project scores a glowing front-page article in
The New Yorker AND a their own segment on 60 minutes.
Just for
fun, let's take a look back at how Liberal bloggers were treated in 2006
for doing saying/exactly the same things.https://t.co/6VIdjny6d2
— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico)
October 12, 2020
Then came Trump, and almost overnight MSNBC became the Recently Unemployed Bush
Regime Dead-Ender/Hate Radio talker/Weekly Standard Editor Full
Employment Project, which, in turn, gave birth to the Lincoln Project, which
MSNBC sold the shit out of as if they were dick pills or reverse mortgages.
There were endless glowing
interviews. Book promotions. Practically handing the mic over to
them week after week. Running their ads over and over again as "news".
For decades, the mainstream media Tone Police stomped the hell out of any
Liberal who tried to play hardball. Now, as we all watched in real time,
that same mainstream media fell all over itself giving the Lincoln Lads
tens of millions of dollars worth of free, flattering promotion.
Now put on your Imagination Hats and try to imagine a universe in which
actual Liberals
who had been right about the Right all along -- right about
the Right during all the years when the Lincoln Lads were being paid
princely sums to angry up the crazies in order to get Republican monsters
elected -- got that kind of sweetheart coverage from cable news and American
newspapers.
Imagine if...
...there were bidding wars over who would get to publish Digby's book, and endless
coverage of it in the media.
...instead of dying poor and in obscurity, the late Steve
Gilliard, who had Michael Steele's number from jump, had been given
the teevee pundit seat reserved for odious Mr. Steele.
...it was Eric Boehlert who had been chosen to host Meet the Press and it was Chuck Todd
who was hit by a train.
...it had been the Sexy Liberal crew
interviewed by 60 Minutes about their strategy for taking down Trump.
But none of that happened, and nothing like that will ever happen.
By contrast, the launch of the Lincoln Project was treated by the media as a cause for rejoicing on the scale somewhere between the development of the polio vaccine and the arrival
of the Mercury astronauts in New York City:
Finally, there is light at the end of this tunnel! Finally the
heroes we prayed for have come!
And the money poured into the Lincoln Lads' coffers. And out
came more ads calling Trump an asshole. And calling Susan Collins a
ditzy fuckface. And calling Lindsay Graham a gimp.
And in poured even more money.
And a few of us in what remains of the Liberal blogosphere digital world -- a very few of us -- started
looking around and asking, "What the actual fuck is going on?" Do you people know
who these goof are? What dregs of the racist Right they were palling
around in just five minutes ago? These guys built entire careers
calling you commie scum and electing ghouls to destroy everything you hold
dear. And these ads? They're not going to budge any Republican
votes. They're not going to "mess with Trump's head". All
they're doing is repeating back to you your own fantasies of rage and
revenge and getting right up in some fascist's grill and shouting "Fuck You!".
Jesus, Seka and Johnny "Wad" Holmes people, these ads are just political PornHub clips for Liberals. How
can you not see that?
But the people liked their political porn. They thirsted for it.
And so the cycle of porn, followed by free publicity for that porn on cable
news, followed by money continued. I wrote about it, over and over
again, in great detail, and the general reaction from my allies (such as it was) was that I
needed to shaddap and get with the program.
Being a good soldier I reassured my scolders and upbraiders that they had
nothing to worry about. That I had written on a wide variety of
subjects over the past 17 years, and however right I turned out to be in the
end, none of if had ever made the slightest difference and none of it had ever earned me one iota of credibility for the next time I started making
unpopular predictions. So they needn't be concerned that some nobody
blogger out here in the middle of Middle America pointing out that, say, the
Lincoln Project has a Rick Wilson problem will ruin everything and get Trump re-elected
Don't worry Susie, I have a long history of nobody listening to me, not
even my "allies" :-)
Until 4-5 years later.
And
then it's all "Holy shit, why didn't anyone warn us!"
— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico)
June 18, 2020
But the doomsayers kept at it, warning me that jostling the Lincoln Lads'
elbows even slightly could mean the ruin of us all, and whether or not I was
actually right about the sleazoid character and histories of the Lincoln
Lads was beside the fucking point
because didn't I realize that American democracy was on the line! So if I wanted to remain a Liberal in good standing I had damn well
shut up and start clapping or Tinkerbell would be dead, dead, dead and it
would all be my fault!
Well, (he said, rounding the clubhouse turn) since I had already been
through this sort of thing with the Cult of Greenwald, this time around this "friendly fire" didn't really bug me. I kept right on writing and watched as all my initial predictions
about how these recently former Republican would leverage the existence of
Trump and the legitimate threat he posed into lucrative new media perches
for themselves --
Trump was sent by Satan to normalize Bill Kristol
— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico)
August 16, 2017
-- from which they could virtually embargo any discussion of their own complicity
in building the GOP monster machine that made Trump possible in the first
place.
The Lincoln Lads moved fast, grabbing book deals extolling their electoral
genius (and calling Trump a shit head), setting themselves up as the sole arbiters of Who Shall Be Forgiven of Their Political Sins and Who Shall Be
Damned Forever ("Boom Times Are Coming to the Indulgence Factory") and
going international:
The Trump-taunting Lincoln Project Is Coming to Israel. But Not as
Liberal Saviors
Fresh from what fans consider their Never Trump triumph, the Lincoln
Project founders have a new mission: To help ditch Netanyahu. But you
might not like what happens next.
The media did its part as well. Before the smoke had cleared from the
2020 election, Brian Williams (Brian who?) was on the air throwing "Michael
Steele and the Lincoln Project" a victory parade.
Brian Williams is now telling America that Michael Steele and the
Lincoln Project should take a "well-deserved victory lap" for this
election.
— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico)
November 5, 2020
Except, no.
Because for all their faunching and preening and all the unlimited and glowing free
media they were handed by virtually every media outlet, the Lincoln Project
amounted to nothing. Sure, they had built a
very profitable Liberal political porn site, but by
every electoral metric it was a failure. Trump's 2020 vote total was +10M higher than 2016, not
lower. Their main senatorial targets like Graham and Collins --
who the Lincoln Lads promised they would knock off without breaking a sweat -- both won handily and by much bigger margins than they had had in their
last elections.
If you needed a byline to tell you bitter truths, you could turn to the wise words of
Brother Charlie Pierce:
The Lincoln Project Didn't Move 10 Votes in This Election
Never Trump conservatives are about as relevant to the actual election
results this year as are the Whigs or the Free Soil Party.
But credulous Liberals continued to defend these goofs because they had gotten in
too deep, which is what every con man bets on. Because they gave their
hearts and dollars away to grifters that their trusted Liberal teevee
network re-branded into heroes by putting them on the air practically every
day while banning any discussion of their sleazy pasts.
And what would it say about them -- about their faith in their own their
judgement -- if they were now forced to admit they were
not only wrong, but that they had been so easily scammed into carrying water
for and lining the pockets of a bunch of Republicans?
What would it say about them that the mouthy grouches who warned them
not to do it were right all along?
And yet, because reality doesn't care about our feelings, and because
beneath its glowing mainstream media façade, the Lincoln Project has
always been a rat's nest of cynical, profit-driven and just plain skeevy
Republican operatives, it came as no surprise to this tired, old blogger
that when it fell apart, it fell apart really fast.
First came the revelations of scandal. Then the attempts to cover up
the scandals and smear anyone who spoke out of school. Then the mass
resignations. And, of course, there was all of that grifting.
All of which
I documented here as it was happening.
And now, as foretold by your host (albeit through a glass and darkly) two
years ago --
I look forward to Matt Damon playing Rick Wilson and Ben Affleck
playing Steve Schmidt in an 8-part, Lincoln Project funded Showtime
series called "Saviors of the Republic".
— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico)
October 27, 2020
-- ShowTime has indeed completed and is releasing a five-part documentary
about the collapse of the Lincoln Project.
Which, in turn, has
prompted Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt to leap into his own hΔ«nayΔna
and (as I said miles and miles ago at the beginning of this very long
post) use all of this words to paddle the hell away from the Lincoln Lads as fast as he
can.
Which, along with the documentary itself, is now getting all kinds of play
in all kinds of places:
Lincoln Project's Steve Schmidt blasts co-founders as unethical,
suggests disgraced group should disband
Schmidt says Showtime documentary on Lincoln Project shows 'some of
the most despicable and unethical behavior'
So how in the world did this dirty commie nobody Liberal blogger from the
middle of nowhere with no friends inside the media draw such an accurate
bead on the true nature of the Lincoln Lads from the start...
...while every voice in the mainstream media was singing paeans to them
and virtually all of my "allies" were telling me to shut up and sit down?
Well, let's answer that question by rephrasing it like this: How in the world could I have predicted that building a Super PAC out of
the timbers of old GOP pirate ships, selling it to a credulous public with tens of millions of
dollars worth of free publicity and enlisting "liberal" MSNBC to endorse
it, and then crewing it with Republican brigands, mercenaries.
marauders and cut-throats would lead to conflict, scheming, plunder and
betrayal?
Golly, I dunno. I guess I'm just a fooking genius. Fooking
psychic!
Either that, or maybe I just understood what was likely to happen when a
bunch of Republican mercenaries and con men were handed the keys to the
media, while at the same time credulous Liberal were told over and over
again by that same media that unless these grifters were given their
unswerving support democracy was doomed.
Understood it in the same way one can understand a simple, well-known chemical reaction. The
same way any high school chemistry teacher can tell you what will happen
if you drop metallic sodium into water.
