Powerful GOP Influencers Announce Mass Trump Defection & Multi-Million Dollar Attack

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An anti-Trump group of Republicans are preparing to launch a multi-million dollar ad campaign against the sitting president in Florida, which could end up one of the most worthwhile prizes on Election Day for whichever major presidential campaign manages to win in the state. The group, called Republican Voters Against Trump and co-founded by longtime conservatives Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell, “found a large number of moderate suburbanites and retirees… who were open to voting for Mr. Biden but needed some additional persuasion to break their typical preference for the G.O.P.,” as The New York Times summarized what the ad campaign’s director, Mike Murphy, had to say.

Murphy used to work for now former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and he’s directing the latest Republican Voters Against Trump ad campaign alongside fellow former Bush staffers David B. Bill and Tim Miller, according to the Times. Although Bush was unsuccessful in his 2016 Republican presidential primary bid, he did win election to the governorship of Florida two times.

Murphy said:

‘What we are going to do is go right at the suburbanites and surround them.’

The former Bush staffers’ campaign is slated to launch after Labor Day (which is soon) and has been named “Project Orange Crush.” As the Times summarizes, Murphy said, specifically, that the group “planned to focus on several hundred thousand voters who could be the political tipping point” in the state, which Trump won by a small margin in 2016. According to a memo composed by Republican Voters Against Trump, if Biden wins Florida — where he’s currently leading by an average of 3.7 percent in polls — then he “would likely need to win only one other major battleground state, such as Michigan or Wisconsin, to deny Mr. Trump a second term,” as the Times summarizes.

Republican Voters Against Trump isn’t the only major conservative-leaning organization that’s been advocating against Trump — another group, called The Lincoln Project, has been doing the same. There are notable signs in polling that key electorates in Florida may be shifting away from Trump. Compared to exit polls taken after the 2016 election, back in April, Democratic presidential pick Joe Biden was doing a staggering 16 percent better among senior voters than Hillary was. More recently, polling in a major population center — most of Pinellas County, Florida — which Hillary won by just 3 percent in 2016 showed Biden up by 14 percent.