Anti-Trump group Republicans draw up $50 million attack plan
A Republican group dedicated to opposing former President Donald J. Trump plans to spend $50 million to stop him through a series of homemade testimonial videos from voters who supported him in previous elections but say they don’t like him will no longer be able to support in 2024.
The group, Republican Voters Against Trump, first emerged during the 2020 campaign and reappeared for the 2022 midterm elections. It is led by Sarah Longwell, a leading figure in Never-Trump politics, whose focus groups and polling are the mainstay of politics. centre-right podcasts and have made her a go-to for political reporters looking to decipher the motivations behind Trump supporters.
Unlike Democratic organizations that want to help President Biden by promoting his record as president, Ms. Longwell’s group is focused solely on attacking Mr. Trump through the votes of his former base. The Republican Voters Against Trump website features 100 videosof one to three minutes, in which Republicans speak to a computer or cell phone camera about why they voted for Trump in 2016 or 2020 and will not do so in 2024.
The personal testimony style, Ms. Longwell said, has proven far more successful in her focus groups at splitting Trump voters away from him than traditional attack ads contrasting Mr. Trump with Mr. Biden.
In particular, the speakers in the videos do not praise Mr. Biden or offer an argument as to why he deserves a second term. Nor does any of the initial testimony address the right to abortion — the issue that has driven Democratic electoral victories since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022.
“It is very important to understand that you are not building a pro-Joe Biden coalition,” Ms. Longwell said. “You are building an anti-Trump coalition.”
In 2020, Republican Voters Against Trump ended the presidential campaign with more than 1,000 home videos on its website from people who voted for Trump in 2016 but said they would not do so again. By 2024, the group will start with 100 testimonials and instructions on its website for former Trump supporters to submit their own stories.
So far, the anti-Trump Republicans who wrote their thoughts for Ms. Longwell have focused on Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, blaming him for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol 2021.
Abortion, Ms. Longwell said, was a much less pressing concern for these voters. She said many of them did not connect Mr. Trump to the 2022 Supreme Court decision and did not believe he opposed the practice.
“They view Trump as a cultural moderate,” she said. ‘They think he pays for abortions. No one thinks this man has an ounce of sexual morality. They don’t think he’s Mike Pence. And that helps him.”
Ms Longwell said she had already committed $20 million to her 2024 efforts and wanted to raise the rest of the money for her advertising campaign between now and the autumn.