AntiTrump Republicans set sights on GOP Senate

WASHINGTON — A loose association of current and former Republicans working to sink President Trump’s reelection 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 emerging belief, based on more than a dozen interviews, is 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 argue that GOP senators must pay a steep price for their 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 Republicanturnedindependent political strategist who now works for The Lincoln Project, one of the most pugnacious of the antiTrump GOP groups. “Every one of them should be voted out of office, with the exception of Mitt Romney.”

Not every Republican

Trump critic agrees with the unsparing approach, contending that many of the GOP senators most vulnerable in 2020 are the sort of lawmakers who least embody Trump’s worldview.

But the Lincoln Project has nonetheless placed sixfigure 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 threeseat 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.”

In Senate races expected to draw tens of millions of dollars in spending, the relatively small expenditures from the Lincoln Project are unlikely to persuade many voters on their own. And even with bigger budgets, it’s unclear if enough “Never Trump” Republicans — a faction whose ranks are concentrated among former GOP officials and strategists who aren’t necessarily representative of the larger party — reside in these states to make a meaningful difference.

Still, the list of antiTrump organizations powered by conservatives is growing. Former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh said he plans to formally roll out the Bravery Project this week, yet another group that will attempt to reach tens of thousands of disaffected Republicans in the six core presidential battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Republicans hold a 5347 majority in the Senate, meaning Democrats need to gain three seats — or four, if Democratic Sen. Doug Jones falls in deep red Alabama — to wrest control of the upper chamber for the first time in six years if they also win the presidency (the vice president casts tiebreaking votes in the Senate).

David Catanese and Alex Roarty are McClatchy Newspapers writers.