The NeverTrump contingent knows what they don’t want— Trump back in the White House and MAGAts running wild over a tattered democracy and dysfunctional union. But now that they’ve met him up close and personal, almost no one thinks DeSantis is enough of an improvement to make an effort on his behalf. Yesterday, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Shane Goldmacher reported that the Koch network isn’t waiting to find someone good. Instead they’re just going start tearing down the Orange Hitler before it’s too late. So they’ve raised more than $70 million and “with some of this large sum to start, the network, Americans for Prosperity Action, plans to throw its weight into the GOP presidential nominating contest for the first time in its nearly 20-year history. The network spent nearly $500 million supporting Republican candidates and conservative policies in the 2020 election cycle alone.” But this doesn’t look like a plan to support a Trump alternative. It looks like a plan to try to destroy Trump, which is what the Lincoln Project and other NeverTrump groups do, some of which are basically conservative Democrats now and feel perfectly comfortable backing Biden.
Two of Charles Koch’s own operations— Koch Industries and Stand Together— but in $25 million each of the $70 million seed money. The Koch network’s goal in the 2024 presidential primaries, which has been described only indirectly in written internal communications, is to stop Trump from winning the Republican nomination. In February, a top political official in the network, Emily Seidel, wrote a memo to donors and activists saying it was time to ‘have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter.’ Since then, Republican voters have rallied around the former president, with his support in polls strengthening his front-runner status after his two indictments. Some of the biggest donors in Republican politics, including some in the Koch network, had been hanging their hopes on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as Trump’s most promising rival. But DeSantis has disconcerted many donors with his early campaign stumbles and a slip in his poll numbers.” This should sound pretty familiar:
With seven months until the primaries, the Koch coalition of conservatives is still searching for who its influential and wealthy donors believe can take down the former president, a reflection of a broader paralysis among anti-Trump Republican donors who have watched in shock as Trump’s poll numbers have held despite two indictments. A memo that circulated inside the Koch network this month made the case that Trump’s renomination was not inevitable, arguing that the issue of electability could still weaken him.
Some top Republican donors, who routinely write seven- or eight-figure checks to support candidates, are keeping their checkbooks closed as they wait to see whether DeSantis can improve or whether another candidate, like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, pops during the summer debates. Their paralysis has benefited Trump, who is begrudgingly viewed by many top party donors as the inevitable nominee.
Yet officials in the Koch network profess optimism that 2024 will not be a repeat of 2016, when Trump began winning statewide races with roughly a third of the party’s Republican base behind him in a fractured, crowded field.
The notion of Trump’s inevitability “is being pushed by left-leaning media outlets, political operatives and the Trump campaign itself,” Michael Palmer, president of the Koch-affiliated voter data group i360, wrote in a memo this month.
Palmer sought to dispel that narrative: “The country is in a much different place than it was eight years ago. Voters of all stripes (including GOP primary voters) have a changed base of knowledge regarding the former president, and other candidates will most certainly treat him differently in the primary this time around.” [Is this guy 18 years old? On acid?]
…Palmer argued that Trump was weaker than he appeared. He noted how much time was left in the campaign, the fact that early polling often doesn’t predict the winner, that many voters express concern about Trump’s general-election viability, and that a chunk of the former president’s voters have signaled openness to another, “more electable” candidate.
Palmer wrote that “support for DeSantis at this time likely represents a generic Republican as his policy positions are not well known outside of Florida.”
The group is expected to make a new round of digital advertising on the issue of electability in the presidential race, in addition to sending out its first piece of direct mail in the coming days.
The group has also made a series of endorsements in down-ballot races, where it plans to spend significant sums. Americans for Prosperity has 300 full-time employees within states and 800 part-timers, officials said. It is about to make its first round of congressional endorsements.
It’s not clear how soon before the Iowa caucuses early next year the group will decide on the best candidate to back against Trump [giving hope to a dozen wastes of time to stay in the race, harboring the impossible dream].
According to the preliminary draft of the FEC filings for Americans for Prosperity Action, its major donors include Art Pope, a North Carolina businessman who attended a policy retreat hosted by former Vice President Mike Pence before he joined the presidential race; Craig Duchossois, a Chicago businessman; Jim and Rob Walton, brothers and heirs to the Walmart fortune; and Ron Cameron, an Arkansas poultry magnate.
DeSantis in particular has taken several positions that are ideologically at odds with the Koch network, including his promise to repeal the First Step Act— a criminal justice reform bill that was passed during the Trump presidency with the strong backing of the network. Yet the group’s officials may ultimately choose pragmatism over strict agreement on key issues if it looks as though a candidate could win.
As they wait for the Republican field to winnow, top network officials are trying to pull off a difficult feat: changing who votes in Republican primaries. The network has a vast army of door-knockers, backed by tens of millions of dollars, who fan out across competitive states each election cycle to support candidates.
During these early months of the Republican presidential primaries, the network is dispatching these same activists to engage voters who are open to supporting somebody other than Trump. They are beginning a conversation with those voters, collecting data on them and raising doubts about Trump’s chances of winning a general election. They intend to return to these voters’ doors closer to the primaries to try to persuade them to vote for the network’s preferred candidate.
“A key part of our strategy to elect better leaders is to empower more people’s voices in the primaries,” Seidel said in a statement. “We’re asking general election voters to show up in the primaries to support better candidates— and in speaking to tens of thousands of those voters already, they are enthusiastic to get engaged earlier to support a candidate who can win.”
The well-funded effort to defeat Trump Trump represents something of a do-over. Ahead of the 2016 Republican primaries, Marc Short, a senior Koch official at the time, argued internally that the network should spend heavily to stop Trump and support a rival with a more conservative policy record, such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas or Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.
Top officials and donors killed the idea, but some in the network regretted it. Short has come full circle. He went on to join the Trump-Pence campaign and served in the Trump administration as legislative affairs director and then chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. Short is now advising Pence as he runs for president against his former boss.
Meanwhile, Trump has released another trial balloon regarding his non-participation in the first RNC-sponsored presidential primary debate. The debate— scheduled for August 23 in Milwaukee and on Fox— has all kinds of rules for participation, including a loyalty oath to the eventual primary winner, which its hard to imagine Trump ever agreeing to because of his hatred for DeSantis and for some of the minor candidates like Chris Christie. Trump teased the idea of staging his competing event on the same night, presumably on Newsmax, because he claims Fox is biased against him, in his words, “a hostile network… We've had a lot of offers, whether it's a rally or whether it's an interview by somebody else. Not to be braggadocious but the debate will not be a very exciting one if I'm not there.” He’s disdainful of his opponents and said “Why would I give them time to make statements? Why would I do that when I'm leading them by 50 points and 60 points.” Christie says he knows Trump well enough to be sure that he's just afraid to debate and lose his lead in the polls.
koch's interests are strictly financial. and he knows the nazi party is his vehicle for lower regs and taxes. he's afraid trump will be a poison pill and lead to losing majorities and the white house. $70 mil, however, is chump change. the nazis won't be paying much attention until he can come up with several hundred mil.