The most blistering voices in the campaign to defeat Trump are so far not coming from Democrats, but rather from Republicans -- and, in some cases, former Republicans -- who are delivering a dizzying stream of ads to needle the President and castigate his actions.
Yet with polls showing about 9 out of 10 Republicans saying they support Trump, it's far from certain how many GOP voters are open to turning against the President. But this time, the Never Trump message isn't simply anti-Trump -- it's explicitly trying to drive voters to Joe Biden.
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"He has done harm to the nation," Jack Spielman, a 33-year Army veteran and Michigan Republican who voted for Trump in 2016, told CNN. "Just as what happened with the Reagan Democrats, now it's the Republicans' turn to become Republican Democrats or Biden Republicans and return the favor. The nation needs us right now to get on a corrective course."
Spielman is among those offering a testimonial in ads from Republican Voters Against Trump, which is one of the groups challenging the President. The Lincoln Project is another leading voice of the Never Trump movement, producing some of the most scorching spots ever to run against a sitting President. Both groups are pledging to spend several million and scrambling to raise more, but even a successful fundraising effort will yield only a fraction of what candidates are investing in the race.
"The most powerful office in the world needs more than a weak, unfit, shaky President," a narrator said in a recent Lincoln Project ad, which sharply questioned Trump's fitness for office. "Trump doesn't have the strength to lead, nor the character to admit it."
The television and digital campaign, along with acerbic tweets, is essentially designed to give Trump a dose of his own medicine. But it's also aimed at seeing whether a broader swath of Republicans may be more receptive to making Trump a one-term President, given his handling of the coronavirus crisis, the wounded economy and racial injustice in America.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign declined to comment about the Never Trump movement. The President's aides have previously dismissed the movement as "irrelevant" and "sad."
'Our focus in 2020 is really thinking about real people'
"It's not that Donald Trump just gives us material for the ads," said Sarah Longwell, strategic director of Republican Voters Against Trump. "It's about Donald Trump not being fit to be President, and everybody is seeing that now."
Longwell, a longtime Republican strategist who has been working to defeat Trump since before he was elected, has conducted focus groups with hundreds of Republicans who supported the President. Those conversations led her to believe that many voters are looking for a permission structure -- or, perhaps, in need of a little like-minded nudging -- to abandon Trump.
"In 2016, he got nominated, everybody sort of panicked and we all tried to beat him and obviously we failed,"
