I have a suggestion for the Lincoln Project, the much-celebrated organization formed by a collection of Never Trumper GOP and former GOP political consultants and activists who banded together in the 2020 presidential election cycle to help defeat Trump.

The Lincoln Project

If you haven’t heard of the Lincoln Project, starting in the 2020 election it raised money to air brutally pointed ads criticizing Trump. Liberals like me loved watching their ads, but I wasn’t convinced how effective they were.

While always cathartic for committed Trump opponents, the ads too often seemed to pick topics and a tone that they thought would get under Trump’s skin or raise money from Trump opponents, rather than topics and a tone that would prove most persuasive to the decisive right-leaning swing voters. 

But overall, I don’t mean to criticize the Lincoln Project. Co-founded by recovering Republicans Rick Wilson and Reed Galen, it was well-intentioned and helpful. It produced a huge volume of ads and social media videos that were widely aired and shared. Those ads served as a primal scream for Republicans who had watched in horror as their party got hijacked by the most corrupt, inept, and bigoted president of our times. It “fired up the base,” which is one important need in any campaign. In the process, it developed a huge database of Trump opponents from across the ideological spectrum, which helped it raise over $80 million in the 2020 cycle. 

A New Focus for Lincoln Project Money

But in 2024, more of this “singing to the choir” advertising isn’t the best way for the Lincoln Project to keep Donald Trump or his Mini Me Ron DeSantis out of power. Instead, the Lincoln Project should back a strong Republican running as a third-party candidate.

Such a right-leaning third-party candidate could serve as an Election Day safe haven for people who hate Trump or DeSantis, but will never be able to stomach voting for Biden, who has been a committed and effective champion for liberal causes. 

If such a right-leaning third-party candidate could even draw 1 percent of the vote in 2024, that could be enough to keep Trump or DeSantis out of power.  If the candidate could draw something like 10 percent, it could lead to the kind of landslide loss that could perhaps finally cause the party to jettison its Trumpian fetish, which is the Lincoln Project’s long-term goal.

Also, a conservative third-party candidate could completely or partially offset any otherwise-Biden votes that might be peeled away if a more left-leaning third-party candidate is on 2024 ballots, such as Andrew Yang. Yang is the businessman and 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidate who left the Democratic Party to form the Forward Party. A third-party candidacy from the left without a counter-balancing third-party candidacy from the right could easily help Trump or DeSantis gain power.

Even a modestly successful conservative third-party candidate could swing the 2024 election.  Keep in mind, Trump could have escaped defeat in 2020 if he had only gotten about 44,000 more votes in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. That is only about 0.08 percent of the 154.6 million people who voted for president in 2020. Those 44,000 votes wouldn’t have been enough for Trump to have overcome his 7 million popular vote loss, but because the United States is stuck with the profoundly undemocratic Electoral College system, it could have given Trump an Electoral College tie.

Third-Pary Liz Could Prove Decisive

The ideal choice for a Lincoln Project-based third-party run is Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.  The Cheney surname is well known, and she gained a great deal of national visibility and respect during the congressional January 6 insurrection investigation and hearings.  She is the most well-known and politically talented of the Never Trumper elected officials. 

Perhaps most importantly, Cheney has the background, knowledge, demeanor, and inclination to make an aggressive case against Trump that will connect with some right-leaning swing voters. When it comes to Trump, she clearly is not inclined to pull punches, and the news media covers what she has to say.

While Cheney is vehemently anti-Trump, with a voting record that aligned with Trump 91% of the time, she is not so moderate that she would tempt many liberals or left-leaning independents to vote for her instead of Biden.

One of the primary reasons running as a third-party candidate is so daunting is that it’s very challenging to raise enough money when not affiliated with one of the two major political parties. The Lincoln Project is the only Never Trump-oriented organization that can raise anything close to the amount of money it would take to help a Republican third-party candidate get onto state ballots and make sufficient amounts of noise.  Again, the Lincoln Project raised $80 million in 2020, so it already has the donor database to raise a substantial sum in a hurry.

The Lincoln Project leadership should go all-in supporting a Cheney candidacy, whether as the Lincoln Project as currently constituted, or as Lincoln Project leaders disbanding and formally joining the Cheney campaign. Doing so would be a more effective way to keep Trump out of power than pumping more snarky Lincoln Project ads in an environment that will already be plenty thick with tough anti-Trump ads.