What I’ve Seen at the Revolution: What Began as NeverTrump is Now Much More
In February 2016, Donald Trump won the New Hampshire and South Carolina Republican presidential primaries as well as the Nevada caucuses. His takeover of the Republican party was well underway. That same month, however, a small band of Republican political operatives and conservative intellectuals began to organize a resistance movement. By the end of that month, the hashtag #nevertrump was the top worldwide trend on Twitter. As a political effort, Never Trump ultimately failed to prevent the alt-right populist conquest of the GOP, causing critics and skeptics to declare it a failure. But as a movement it has endured and grown. It is now on a path to create a new, moderate, Center-Right identity that could, over time, help remake American politics.
I was the Republican nominee for the US Senate from Washington state in 2016. From the moment he came down his golden escalator, I made it clear that I could never support Trump. After 37 years as a Republican activist, elected official, and State Party Chairman, the Trump takeover left me politically homeless. I left the GOP and have spent much of the last five years working within the movement that began as Never Trump, but is now much, much more.
Virtually from the beginning, this movement has been about more than just defeating Trump. The current and former Republican leaders and activists who make up the movement aim to create (or re-create) a political culture and rallying point for all those citizens who stand between Trump’s culture-war authoritarianism on the right and socialist excesses on the left. It is too soon to tell what this movement will ultimately become or accomplish. After all, it took 20 years for the opponents of slavery to achieve political power. It took longer than that for Southern conservatives to migrate from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, and just about as long for the post World War II conservative movement led by the likes of William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan to take control of the Republican party in 1980. Only five years in, this new movement is still forming.
From Never Trump’s inception up to Election Day 2016, the movement’s efforts were focused on beating Trump. Republican opinion leaders spoke out against him. PACs were formed which did targeted (mostly digital) advertising. And Bill Kristol, arguably the man who has done more for the movement than anyone else, launched a last-ditch effort to recruit a candidate to run as an independent alternative to Trump. Eventually, former House Republican Chief Policy advisor Evan McMullin, and Republican digital strategist Mindy Finn, agreed to run for president and vice president. All these efforts were hampered by the widely held assumption that Trump was going to lose, and that establishment Republicans could then clean up the mess and reclaim the GOP. Then came the shock of November 8, 2016.
The Center-Right rebels failed to defeat Donald Trump. But unlike the vast majority of Republicans, they refused to submit. They took the infrastructure they had built, and in 2017, went into the wilderness and began to organize. In January of that year, McMullin and Finn launched Stand Up Republic, a non-profit organization with chapters around the country to advocate for the policies and principles of the new movement. At the same time, the Niskanen Center Niskanen Center — Niskanen Center (a Washington, D.C.-based think tank which I joined as a Senior Fellow) began hosting a twice-monthly discussion group of Center-Right intellectuals, operatives, and former Republican elected officials known as The Meeting of the Concerned. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/us/politics/republicans-democrats-coalition-trump.html
Like many activists, I spent 2017 and 2018 working on The Centrist Project (later renamed Unite America), whose mission was to elect moderate independents to office to compel one or both parties to come towards the center — potentially the first step in the creation of a new Centrist Party. Kristol and McMullin were among those who attended a key organizing meeting in Philadelphia in August 2017. This meeting was my first real introduction to the movement that was coming together.
These early activities helped set our path. Yes, Never Trump, but much more than that. We are focused on practical politics and winning elections to create something new. The mission was never to restore the status quo ante in the GOP, but rather to create a modern, moderate, Center-Right movement that would support capitalism but also reforms (such as to our electoral system). We would also defend democracy and the rule of law while rejecting nativism and intolerance.
In August 2018, Kristol formed the non-profit organization Defending Democracy Together (DDT), which served as the umbrella organization and funder for several Center-Right groups beginning with Republicans for the Rule of Law, which delivered anti-Trump messaging during the Mueller investigation and the impeachment process. In December 2018, following the demise of Kristol’s magazine, The Weekly Standard, he, and DDT stood up a replacement online publication and podcasting platform, The Bulwark, The Bulwark which has emerged as the movement’s chief opinion outlet.
During 2019, I, and many in the movement, were attracted to the possibility of Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz running for president as a moderate independent. When Schultz pulled the plug on that campaign in September of that year, some of the prominent former Republican consultants working with him, including Steve Schmidt and Reed Galen, turned their attention to a new project. On December 17, Schmidt and Galen, joined by consultant Rick Wilson and former U.S. attorney George Conway, published an op-ed in the New York Times announcing the creation of The Lincoln Project, a super PAC that would go on to spend over $90 million against Trump and other Republicans during 2020. I signed on as one of the Senior Advisors to the Lincoln Project.
The Lincoln Project was the largest and loudest of the Center-Right PACs which sought to defeat Trumpism in 2020, but it was not the only one. In May 2020, Kristol and DDT spun off another organization, Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT). Led by former Republican consultants Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, and Mike Murphy, RVAT collected and disseminated personal video testimony from grassroots Republicans urging their fellow party members to oppose Trump. Several smaller PACs weighed in too, all focused on peeling off three to five percent of Republicans and Trump-leaning independents in key states. Never Trump was definitely part of the coalition that elected Democrat Joe Biden as president in 2020.
Two meetings I was privileged to attend were crucial in solidifying the ongoing nature of this movement and establishing the parameters of what we seek to accomplish. On Saturday, February 29, 2020, McMullin’s Stand Up Republic partnered with another coalition group, Principles First, to host a conference for hundreds of Center-Right activists at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The day before, McMullin had convened a private strategy session with roughly fifty of the movement’s key leaders from around the country, from which two significant outcomes emerged.
First, we all agreed that if Biden were the Democratic nominee the movement would dedicate our efforts to helping him win, but if Sen. Bernie Sanders were the nominee there was significant support in the room for the immediate creation of a new, moderate third party, making clear that this movement was opposed to both Trumpism and “democratic socialism.” Second, the group agreed to stay together and continue to plan and organize. Attendees left the meeting knowing that they were part of a community (not just an ad hoc temporary effort to beat Trump) and that the most aggressive option — the creation of a new political party — was not off the table.
A year later, on February 5, 2021, McMullin (ever the movement’s convener) worked with former Trump administration official Miles Taylor (and his DDT-incubated advocacy group The Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform (REPAIR)) to bring together roughly 120 current and former Republican leaders to discuss next steps. The events post-election — including Trump’s Big Lie of a stolen election, the January 6th insurrection, the second impeachment debate, and the gathering backlash against Rep. Liz Cheney and other Republicans who had stood against Trump and with the Constitution — had energized and grown the movement.
We were united behind the belief that a new political organization was needed, and that our philosophy was “Center-Right,” not “conservative” or “centrist.” The debate was over whether to create a new party or a new political faction that would compete both within and outside the GOP. On this we were nearly evenly divided. In the following weeks, McMullin and Taylor met with a subgroup of advisors, including myself, and a consensus was reached regarding the party vs. faction question. It was agreed that the new organization would be styled as a movement, and this movement would work to help elect like-minded candidates regardless of party label. It was also agreed that it would build out an infrastructure at the federal and state level, preserving the option to mature into a full-fledged party sometime in the future.
On May 13th of this year, 150 current and former Republican leaders — including former members of Congress, governors, state legislators, administration officials, and party leaders — announced the launch of this new phase of the movement by releasing a set of guiding principles, “A Call for American Renewal.” During a national online townhall meeting on June 24, the formation of the new organization, The Renew America Movement (RAM) Renew America Movement, was announced. RAM is clear in its purpose:
We are principled current and former Republicans building a movement to restore core American principles to our politics, beat back extremists infecting the GOP, and offer a unifying vision for our national future. This is a national movement dedicated to finding, campaigning for, and electing new leaders who live up to our core values and who put country over party. We are unafraid to cross party lines to support the best candidates, or to offer our own candidates running under the RAM banner.
Today, 65+ months after #nevertrump began trending, the Center-Right movement is comprised of hundreds of prominent current and former Republican leaders, hundreds of thousands of donors large and small, and millions of social media followers. It includes intellectual leaders, media pundits, think tanks, political operatives, and a robust fundraising, organizational and political infrastructure. And it is united in support of a coherent ideology best summarized in the Call for American Renewal.
We are building a political movement that mirrors the movement progressives have built on the left to do battle within the Democratic party. Both include multiple PACs and organizations all working to elect candidates in support of a common ideology. Examples on the left include Justice Democrats Justice Democrats — Let’s Elect the Next Generation , Progressive Majority PAC Progressive Majority PAC, and Run for Something Run For Something.
Trumpism/nationalist conservatism, of course, is also a movement, with all the same attributes and components, including a protectionist, isolationist, nativist ideology — but with far more resources because it now controls the Republican Party.
The Republican Party has not exactly split — yet — but chunks of it are breaking off. This new Center-Right movement is a reality. But where does it go from here? And how long before it is capable of winning elections?
Events — specifically the 2022 and 2024 elections — will likely determine how this movement progresses in the near term. Certainly, we will still consider denying power to Donald Trump and his ilk to be Job One. But the results of the next two elections and the paths taken by the two parties will be key. For the first time, numerous Republicans at the state and federal level, who have openly defied Trump and the Republican base, will seek reelection. Will they survive? Will they remain in the Republican party? Will Trump run again? If he does not, what will the battle for the Republican nomination look like? And what of the Democrats? Will Biden run again? Can the Democrats’ establishment moderates continue to maintain effective control over the party if Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi both retire?
If Liz Cheney and the other rebels are reelected and Biden moderates continue to define the Democratic Party, perhaps the Center-Right movement will turn fully towards winning back the GOP. On the other hand, if all the “good” Republicans lose, and/or the Sanders wing takes over the Democratic Party, I believe we will likely take the final step, which I have long supported, and create a new political party, perhaps with the help of moderate Democrats fleeing their own party.
In terms of timing, again, the abolitionist movement provides the best example of how political movements progress. In 1833, William Lloyd Garrison established the American Anti-slavery Society in Philadelphia. Within five years, the organization had more than 1300 chapters and an estimated 250,000 members. Six years later, the movement launched a political party: the Liberty Party. It didn’t win any elections, but it led to the founding of the Free-Soil Party in 1848, a third party which did elect a handful of members of Congress before evolving into the Republican Party in 1854. The GOP, in its turn, destroyed the Whig Party and had become America’s governing party by 1860. Political realignment takes time.
America’s widening political fissures — including both the takeover of the Reagan-Bush Republican Party by culture-war populists and the uprising of the democratic-socialist faction within the Democratic Party — is not quite as visceral an issue as was slavery. But it is producing a sense of unease and political homelessness among the country’s moderate majority. Our party system is shifting and realigning. Millions of Americans are restlessly looking for new options. What began as Never Trump has become much, much more — and may just play a major role in our new political milieu.
