A small group of former George W. Bush administration and campaign officials are trying to help Joe Biden win this November — but contrary to all the media hype, they still make up a tiny fraction of the overall Republican Party.
Thousands of political appointees served under Bush, and I was one of them. A vast majority of my former colleagues support President Trump and will unquestionably support his re-election all the way to the finish line on November 3. More importantly, given that the former president is not taking an active role in this election, using his name and legacy to advance one’s own political agenda is simply dishonest. Those of us who truly valued our time in the Bush administration and respect our former colleagues would never exploit our collective service in such a way.
While the liberal press wants you to believe that the new "43 Alumni for Biden" super PAC is a revolutionary political phenomenon with Earth-shattering electoral consequences, in reality, it’s nothing more than a desperate rebrand for the impotent never-Trump campaign that cast its lot with Hillary Clinton four years ago — and lost.
Most of the so-called Republicans in this organization never supported Donald Trump or his America First platform in the first place. They are the establishment dinosaurs of the GOP who long ago lost touch with their constituents as they devoted themselves to making a fortune by pandering to the political establishment.
Remember Evan McMullin, the former CIA officer who was supposed to spoil the 2016 election? Contrary to the sky-high expectations within the Never Trump movement, he got less than one percent of the vote, collecting only about half as many votes as kooky Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
Of course, the members of the new super PAC will likely claim that their mission is to save the Republican Party from Donald Trump — the same excuse that never-Trumpers used to give for undermining the GOP during the previous election cycle. Their real mission, however, is to curry favor with prospective clients on the left who might one day purchase their services.
The Washington establishment thrives on a revolving-door system of political lobbying. Politicians collect massive campaign contributions from lobbyists, many of whom are former legislators seeking to leverage their contact, connections, and influence for profit. And for those who are willing to sell out their principles and ideals often find that they can fetch quite a hefty price from deep-pocketed corporations hoping to rig the rules of the game in their own favor. Former lawmakers can also exploit their intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Washington to give their new clients an advantage — in essence, the bureaucratic Leviathan provides convenient cover for nefarious actors seeking to betray the public trust and rob the public purse.
The political establishment in Washington has a very good reason to unite against Donald Trump: the President sees Washington for what it truly is — a political swamp teeming with corruption — and he is committed to ending the racket. His campaign of deregulation, for instance, is reducing the administrative bloat that enables many Beltway shenanigans, giving lobbyists and scheming politicians fewer opportunities to take advantage of the inscrutability of the arcane systems they’ve put in place.
In 2016, he ran on a promise to “drain the swamp” by streamlining America’s largest bureaucracies and aggressively fighting corruption. Career politicians accustomed to closing shady deals and exploiting legal loopholes are clearly concerned that they can’t survive under this type of scrutiny for another four years.
President Trump has kept hundreds of other key promises during his first term in the White House, earning a well-deserved reputation as a promise-keeper among most Republican voters. He even occasionally jokes about having kept more promises than he made on the campaign trail, which isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. This President has not only achieved headline-grabbing policy victories such as historic middle-income tax cuts and groundbreaking new trade deals but has also scored a litany of less well-known wins, such as moving the U.S. Embassy to Israel’s true capital of Jerusalem and eliminating glaring loopholes in our country’s generous asylum laws.
Just last month, Donald Trump touted his 96 percent approval rating among Republicans, which is a powerful testament to his effective advancement of conservative principles and policy goals — as well as the record-setting economy his policies gave us before the pandemic struck.
Claiming that anti-Trump Republicans represent some type of a “split” in the GOP is just an old political trick designed to discourage Trump’s base from voting for him in the general election. But we’ve already seen how this movie ends — just like in 2016, the rebranded never-Trumpers won’t make any difference in the outcome.
Darin Selnick is an independent consultant who provides a variety of services to corporations and non-profits in the areas of veterans healthcare, government relations, community outreach, business development, and other issues. Mr. Selnick was a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. His major responsibility was the implementation of the MISSION Act, the biggest transformation of the VA healthcare system in over 20 years. Secretary Wilke awarded him the “Distinguished Career Award”, the highest award a VA Secretary can give.
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