Former Freedom Caucus Member Creates PAC, Focuses on 'Stopping MAGA,' Ousting Gaetz, MTG, Others
So here’s the deal: I’m going to report this story, straight up. In other words, just the 5 Ws — who, what, where, when, and why — and then move on, with zero punditry left behind. Hence, y’all can debate among yourselves in the comment section, but please don’t break the furniture. Deal? Cool, let’s begin.
A former Freedom Caucus member is helping lead a new PAC — political action committee — the goal of which is “stopping MAGA” by ousting some of the House and Senate’s most pro-Trump members.
Lincoln Project 2.0?
As reported by the New York Times, the group Mission Democracy PAC intends to challenge MAGA lawmakers in their often deep-red home districts by running ads and messaging campaigns that accuse the lawmakers of anti-democratic and other extreme positions. The start-up PAC has just $500,000 in the bank, but hopes to raise $18 million for the 2024 general election cycle.
The PAC leaders are former Representative Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who once belonged to the Freedom Caucus but has since left the Republican Party and spoken out against conspiracy theories on the House floor; Olivia Troye, an former official in Donald Trump’s administration who has since been critical of the former president; and Marcus Flowers, an Army veteran and Democrat who lost to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) by 32 points in the 2022 midterms.
In addition to targeting Greene in 2024, the PAC says it will focus on ousting GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Paul Gosar of Arizona — and, I would assume, any other Republicans who fit the MAGA mold as the 2024 campaign season begins in earnest.
Mr. Flowers told the NYT:
If we don’t do something now, if we don’t get these extreme MAGA members out of Congress, we stand to lose our very democracy. It’s time to hold those members accountable, take them to task, [and] attack them in their districts.
The PAC’s first ad — a minute-long spot that blisters GOP moves to restrict abortion in the aftermath of the Roe overturn — goes bottom-line, including dropping an F-bomb or two along the way.
Warning: coarse language in video.
Our government is held hostage by a band of politicians so extreme that only the word fascist describes them.
The ad names several of the aforementioned MAGA members.
Troye said the group focuses on defeating “the worst of the worst,” and expects to add more officials to target in the future, while Riggleman brims with confidence about the PAC’s ability to raise money. Riggleman says:
We’re all pretty prolific with our lists, we know a lot of people to call and we all have pretty good reputations for sticking to facts, not fantasy. We’ve all had incredibly insane real jobs in the real world. And I just think it’s given us a unique way not only to do the mission but also fund-raise and get the monies that we need to continue.
That might very well be the case, but here’s the political conundrum, particularly when fighting against a bloc composed of rabid supporters of another guy — a guy the Mission Democracy PAC fears will destroy democracy in America:
Throughout history, when confronted by — or planning to confront — populist leaders, things often reach the point when the question must be asked: Who’s more “dangerous,” the populist leader or the loyalists who fervently support him?
I’m not prepared to answer the above question, in part because I said at the top I would write the story in the 5 W style of journalism, devoid of political punditry, and that partly is because there’s a lot of water to flow under the bridge before things get really dicey in the Republican race for the 2024 presidential nomination.
That said, I’ll add only this:
As we’ve seen in the past, sometimes the more we attack political figures, the more it fires up their respective bases and the harder they become to beat.
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