Rehab Addicts
The Lincoln Project's Reed Galen goes after former Trump official Miles Taylor in an attempt to define the limits of acceptable Republicanism.
The revelation that the “anonymous” author of the new anti-Trump book A Warning is former DHS aide Miles Taylor drew protective jealousy from the Lincoln Project’s Reed Galen.
Welcome to The Flashpoint.
Taylor’s identity was made public this afternoon, part of a publicity push for his book that doesn’t have much longer to cash in on “warning” the public about a president who by all accounts looks likely to lose the election next week.
The backlash was swift and immediate, due in part to the fact that Taylor’s identity as former administration official turned critic was previously known. An opinion piece written by Taylor for the Washington Post in August had already triggered backlash against the former Chief of Staff to then DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Under Secretary Chad Wolf.
As organizer Laurence Berland noted at Buzzfeed in August, Taylor was intimately involved in the roll out of a media strategy defending Trump’s family separation policy:
His own emails prove that not only was he there prior to its enactment, he even helped prepare its roll out — in an email to former DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in the days before the policy was announced, he sent her talking points with the Orwellian title, "Protecting Children Narrative."
Performative outrage
Thus it was no surprise that critics of the administration jumped all over Taylor in the wake of the latest big reveal. But hearing that from the Lincoln Projects Reed Galen was a bit too on the nose.
The above is strictly true, of course, but let’s not strip it completely of all context. Galen’s bio on the Lincoln Project’s site touts his service to former President George W. Bush, an administration that more than Trump’s chaotic nightmare defines “the banality of evil” Galen wrings his hands over.
“I worked for President George W. Bush from 2002–2003,” Galen wrote in 2017, “and my time there is still a source of pride and fond memories.”
2002-2003 in the White House involved the codification of torture into the U.S. code, the ramming through tax cuts, and using the trauma of the 9/11 attacks to convince the public to support a disastrous war of choice on Iraq.
Rehab addicts
Cleaning up the image of the GOP in the age of Trump has long been the m.o. for the Lincoln Project.
Group co-founder Steve Schmidt, a former Dick Cheney aide who was partially responsible for Sarah Palin’s rise to fame in 2008 and who was incapable of seeing how his career could have led to Trump in a recent CBC interview, is a prime example of the grift the Lincoln Project is running.
Confronted by conservative journalist Jay Caruso earlier this month over his record, Schmidt angrily pointed to three successes he had pride in: Bush’s xenophobic, homophobic 2004 re-election run and the confirmation fights over hard-right Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
Protecting the slush fund
The Lincoln Project isn’t really fooling anyone who doesn’t want to be fooled.
As I wrote at Hellworld in July:
Trump's rise has led liberals to descend into a fearful, paranoid, goldfish-like existence where an all-consuming terror of the possibility of angering the right has overcome all other impulses, leaving the left-leaning body politic without the ability to remember what happened four years ago—let alone four months.
That kind of memory hole is a nightmare situation for historians, journalists, and anyone who hasn't given up yet. But it's perfect for the personal fortunes and future career opportunities of the Lincoln Project, and that’s the whole point.
Liberals have poured millions into the group’s coffers and made fortunes for the founders, who are now entertaining offers to start a media empire, all because they’re willing to tell the president to go fuck himself and their approach is seen as sufficiently masculine.
What that soon-to-be media group does is still unknown, but it’s a safe bet they’ll use their political and social capital to push back against reforms and policies pursued by the next administration that might undo most of the damage Trump’s done on regulations, taxes, and benefits.
Making this plan and other strategies to frustrate the left work will require the Lincoln Project’s continued dominance of the right-wing friend of the liberal space, one they already share with Joe Scarborough. The need to keep the cash and influence spigot on necessitates making their position the limit to the rehabilitation of the right-wing. And that means pretending that Trump’s former aides are beyond the pale—while those who worked alongside the Bush administration can be forgiven.
It’s a strategy that’s working—but let’s not pretend today’s performative outrage is about anything other than ensuring the grift is contained to its current practitioners.