The Lincoln Project

They have spent 40 years and billions of dollars building a carefully-constructed message machine that takes orders from the top and parrots them down to every level, from Tucker Carlson to the right-wing trolls online.

Any time anyone on the Left says anything, they’re ready to pounce. It’s why they spit out things like the “Green New Deal will kill American jobs” or “AOC wants to defund the police.” It is effective because they repeat it, over and over and over, until voters believe it. You and I have both seen it happen. From “defund the police” to “Dems will raise taxes.” Rinse and repeat and convince.

We’re up against a well-funded, established propaganda machine. Help The Lincoln Project fight back today. >>

The science says that to persuade someone, they have to hear a message at least ten times. If you’re watching Fox News, you know how quickly that repetition adds up. It’s all based on science, and yes, there’s some irony in that.

Authoritarian movements like theirs are very top-down. So when Tucker or Trump say something, that’s it. It spreads like wildfire. Breitbart posts on it. Right-wing podcasters do hourlong rants on their behalf. The Wall Street Journal fires up their ed board. That’s how you get from MTG screaming something to a WSJ op-ed putting a genteel facade on an authoritarian idea.

What makes this work is that not only is it coordinated, it rarely misfires. They hitch themselves to an idea like Democrats are weak on crime and you see years of inflated statistics about crime coming to your suburbs to scare you. So when you start to see “defund the FBI” go mainstream, it really is historically without precedent.

The GOP has long held the high ground on crime with voters. It’s why Trump constantly attacked “Democrat run cities” to scare white suburban women into voting for him. And why the “build the wall” crowd keeps beating the issue to death.

The ultra-MAGA crew turning on law enforcement — from calling for defunding the FBI to outing agents’ names to encouraging violent attacks on FBI buildings like the Cincinnati attack — is a glitch in their matrix. But it is beginning to take root, and from what I’ve seen, crucial independent voters (and a majority of Americans) ain’t buying it.

Many Americans have stories like mine. My dad was an FBI agent, stationed in NYC when World War II broke out. He spent his time chasing alleged German spies, but when he was ordered to round up Asian-Americans like the rest of the FBI, he quit rather than continue it. Instead, he joined the Navy, made 28 island landings over three years in the South Pacific, and never regretted it. His favorite line was “You can always say no.” — And he proved it. Growing up, I was taught to respect law enforcement and support our troops. The GOP naturally seized on these messages and made it so that if you supported the GOP, you supported our troops. If you were a Democrat, you were against law and order and against our troops. It was very effective in the suburbs. I know because I was part of GOP campaigns that capitalized on this kind of message.

Now, unthinkably, they’ve conceded the pro-law enforcement message. This is a moment for us to reverse a historical trend and make critical gains with swing voters who might never go back to the GOP. I honestly didn’t think it would come. Their movement is too on-message for this to be regular, so we have to take advantage of it.

We’re focused on five key states where we have clear data on hundreds of thousands of swing voters who will spit out their coffee and never turn back when they hear the direction the ultra-MAGA GOP is taking. This is our wedge. Help us talk to them today. >>

Remember, Biden’s margin in AZ/WI/GA was 44,000 votes. It doesn’t take much.

The best way to describe what’s going on inside the GOP right now is total chaos. The ultra-MAGAs are taking the party in a direction that even some die-hard Republicans realize is akin to jumping off a cliff. Trump and DeSantis are mining national donors for $5000 at a time as they battle for position in the 2024 primary. And they continue to go more and more MAGA.

While they continue to double down on the crazy, we’ll keep doing the work.

Thank you for keeping us in this fight.

-Stuart

@stuartpstevens on Twitter