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Amid all the noise of an election involving Donald Trump all the inflammatory tweets and shadowy Facebook posts one set of ads has somehow managed to break through.

Theres the one of the US president shuffling down a ramp that declares that the president is not well. Theres the whispering one about Trumps loyalty problem inside his White House, campaign and family.

Theres the epic Mourning in America that remakes Reagans election-defining 1984 ad, turning the sun-bathed suburbs into a dark national portrait of pandemic and recession. On Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, those three ads alone have racked up more than 35m views.

The Lincoln Project, run by a group of renegade Republican political consultants, has crystallized one of the core narratives of the 2020 campaign in ways that few other political commercials have in past cycles.

Its work on brutal attack ads sits alongside the swift boat veterans against John Kerry in 2004, the Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and the daisy ad against Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Their reward? Disdain from independent media, distrust across the political spectrum and a recent series of harshly negative coverage from pro-Trump media outlets.

Disdain appears to be the consensus view from the pundits. Atlantic magazine called their ads personally abusive, overwrought, pointlessly salacious, and trip-wired with non sequiturs. The New Republic examined what it called the viral impotency of the Lincoln Project, suggesting they couldnt persuade voters of anything. Even the Washington Post declared most of their ads were aimed not at persuading disaffected Republicans but simply at needling the president.

But thats not how the projects leaders see their work or purpose. In their launch manifesto, published as a column in the New York Times, the founders said their goal was defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box, including his Republican supporters in Congress.

To that end, they said their efforts were about persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to defeat Trump and elect congressional majorities opposed to Trumpism.

In practice, that means organizing anti-Trump Republicans in eight swing states including Florida, Ohio, Arizona and North Carolina to hold virtual town halls and write postcards to Republican neighbors and friends. It also means organizing surrogates to speak to those voters in their home states and towns.

These are Republicans they are familiar with former representatives and mayors, said Sarah Lenti, executive director of the Lincoln Project. People like Rick Snyder in Michigan who will come out and say, Were supporting the Lincoln Project and supporting Joe Biden this cycle. It gives people the cover to say, Our leadership is doing this, so its OK for us too.

Alongside the top-tier surrogates and ads, there is a grassroots effort to organize women, veterans and evangelicals to reach out to persuade Republicans to abandon the president who dominates their party.

There are certain voters were not going to move the one-issue voters on the right to life and thats OK, says Lenti.

Were looking at 3-5% of Republicans in certain states. They tend to be more educated than not. Over 40 years old, and the demographic split is about 50/50, maybe a little towards men. Were also seeing traction with some evangelicals, and those are typically older and less educated.

That sliver of disaffected Republicans is the target for ads like Mourning in America: people who are old enough to remember the original from three decades ago are also old enough to be at the highest risk of the coronavirus. Under the leadership of Donald Trump, the narrator says, our country is weaker, and sicker, and poorer.

That was the first ad that triggered Trump enough to tweet-storm about the group two months ago: a presidential outburst that transformed the Lincoln Projects profile and resources.

A group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first timer, 4 years ago, have copied (no imagination) the concept of an ad from Ronald Reagan, Morning in America, doing everything possible to get even for all of their many failures, Trump tweeted.

If Trump was truly tormented by the Reagan reference, the irony is striking. Trump himself stole, without attribution, Reagans 1980 slogan: Make America Great Again.

For the most part Trumps tweets focused on the individual founders of the project that troubles him so deeply. Given their track record in GOP politics, his dismissal of them as Rinos Republicans In Name Only means there are very few Republicans who can pass the Trump test.

The Lincoln Project founders include John Weaver, who was a political strategist for George HW Bush in 1988 and 1992, as well as John McCains strategist for a decade; Reed Galen, who worked on both Bush campaigns in 2000 and 2004; Steve Schmidt, who ran the McCain campaign in 2008 and worked in the Bush White House and campaigns before that; and George Conway, a conservative lawyer whose wife Kellyanne just happens to work as Trumps counselor in the West Wing.

The pushback did not stop there. The conservative Club for Growth took the extraordinary step of creating and airing its own ad attacking the Lincoln Project. It depicted the group as a bunch of failed strategists trying to make a quick buck by hating not just Trump but the American people.

This month they have been joined by two hit stories in the Murdoch-owned New York Post, accusing the founders of ties to Russia and tax troubles as well as secretly wanting to work for Trump. These may be confusing lines of attack for Trump supporters who have grown numb to ties to Russia, tax troubles and think highly of those who want to work for Trump.

For Democratic ad-makers, the work of the Lincoln Project has earned their respect, even if questions remain about its impact. The ads have struck a chord with progressives and activists who see the Project as validating everything weve been saying about Trump, but now being voiced by the people we usually campaign against, said Jim Margolis, a veteran Democratic strategist and ad-maker for the Obama and Clinton campaigns. The question is whether independent voters, moderate Republicans and white suburban voters will respond as well.

If the objective is modest moving a point or two in the right states with the right people I think they can help win the election. Remember: Hillary Clinton lost the presidency in 2016 by less than one point in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. So even small gains can mean the difference between a Trump second term and a new day in America.

But for some of the ads it is clear they are engaged in a battle for the attention of a singular target.

Some of these ads have an audience of one, says Lenti. Thats always been part of the strategy. Because every time he gets off message, spewing grievances, hes not campaigning. The idea is to get him off message again and again and again. It bothers him. We hear from people inside the White House that he wants them to make us go away. But were not going away.

Trumps concern about the Lincoln Project has only helped to fill its coffers. After seeing Mourning In America, Trump stepped off Marine One and talked to reporters before boarding Air Force One.

They should not call it the Lincoln Project, he complained, after taking more potshots at its founders. Its not fair to Abraham Lincoln, a great president. They should call it the Losers Project.

Instead of turning them into losers, Trump helped raise $2m for his sworn enemies. The group raked in more than $20m by the end of June, far ahead of its target of raising $30m by the end of the election cycle. Most of those funds came after Trumps attacks in May, with small donors making up the bulk of its supporters: the average donation is around $50.

Now the group has enough funds to go after Trumps supporters in tight Senate races. This week it placed its biggest ad buy $4m in Alaska, Maine and Montana as the expanded battlefield underscores its bigger goal.

I dont think this wing of the party is going away, says Lenti. Our job isnt to reform the Republican party. Our job is to end Trump and Trumpism.

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Could this anti-Trump Republican group take down the president? - The Guardian

The death of Herman Cain, attributed to the coronavirus, has made Republicans and President Trump face the reality of the pandemic as it hit closer to home than ever before, claiming a prominent conservative ally whose frequently dismissive attitude about taking the threat seriously reflected the hands-off inconsistency of party leaders.

Mr. Cain, a former business executive and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, had an irreverent, confrontational style that mirrored the presidents own brand of contrarian politics. In his more recent role as a public face for the presidents re-election campaign, he became an emblem of Trump-supporting, mask-defiant science skeptics, openly if not aggressively disdainful of public health officials who warned Americans to avoid large crowds, cover their faces and do as much as possible to limit contact with others.

His view was shared by many conservatives, who have applied a hard-nosed, culture-war mentality to the virus, the most serious public health crisis in a century.

Mr. Trump wrote in praise of Mr. Cain on Twitter on Thursday, calling him a Powerful Voice of Freedom and all that is good.

But Mr. Cains death showed how ill suited that mind-set is to the countrys current predicament. More than 150,000 Americans have died in a pandemic that is ravaging parts of the country where conservative leaders long resisted taking steps that have slowed the virus elsewhere, such as mask mandates and stay-at-home orders.

Those include places like Tulsa, Okla., where Mr. Cain attended a Trump campaign rally in June and showed his disregard for safety precautions on social media shortly before receiving a diagnosis for the virus.

With a uniformity that has defied rising death tolls in their own backyards, Republicans at the federal, state and local levels have adopted a similar tone of skepticism and defiance, rejecting the advice of public health officials and deferring instead to principles they said were equally important: conservative values of economic freedom and personal liberty.

From Arizona to Texas, as infection rates soared and hospital beds filled up, Republican governors stood in the way of local governments that wanted to do more. They overruled city mask mandates, arguing that it amounted to a form of government overreach. They said that requiring businesses to close or limit their capacity would strangle the economy and save few lives. They accused the news media and political opponents of exaggerating the risks to hurt the presidents chances for re-election.

They scorned the experts and mocked those who heeded the governments warnings. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a close ally and vigorous defender of the president, walked around the Capitol in March wearing a Hazmat-style gas mask as he prepared to vote on coronavirus relief legislation.

The governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, posted a picture of himself eating dinner with his family at a crowded restaurant a few days after the World Health Organization formally declared a pandemic. Its packed tonight! his caption read.

And this month in Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson scoffed at the idea of a mask mandate, telling a cheering crowd of supporters, You dont need government to tell you to wear a dang mask.

Yet the virus more than occasionally reminded them that it strikes people of all political stripes indiscriminately.

After his mask stunt, Mr. Gaetz learned that he might have been exposed to someone who was infected and attended the Conservative Political Action Conference. He said he would enter quarantine, and he did not end up having the virus. Mr. Stitt tested positive for the virus this month, the first governor in the country to do so. He continues to resist pressure to issue a mask order, calling it a personal preference.

And this week, adding to the list of people with direct access to the president who have tested positive was Robert C. OBrien, the national security adviser. Others include Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News commentator who is dating Donald Trump Jr. and is helping lead the Trump campaigns fund-raising efforts.

Among some conservative defenders of the president, there is a sense that complaints about masks and other mandates as a threat to personal freedom are overblown.

Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who lobbies for lower taxes and regulations and has served on the board of the National Rifle Association, said that using Mr. Cains death to attack Republicans is going two steps too far. But he added, Theres a difference between not being excited about being told what to do and refusing to do it altogether. But on something like this, when youre out in public, you should wear a mask because its not about you.

Yet there have been few indications that the spate of coronavirus cases among Republicans is leading to any kind of major reckoning in the party. After Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas tested positive this week, he blamed his diagnosis on wearing a mask.

Mr. Trump, who has spoken of being rattled by the death of an old friend who contracted the virus, has been photographed only rarely with a mask on and has repeatedly said he does not consider wearing one the appropriate step for him. He has allowed, however, that he is supportive of mask-wearing by others.

The visuals that emerged from the White House from the beginning of the pandemic suggested an attitude that was, at best, not overly cautious. At an event at the White House in March with executives from Walmart and Walgreens in which Mr. Trump praised his administrations preparedness, he shook hands and patted the backs of multiple people, prompting critics to complain that the president was sending mixed signals to the public.

When the virus re-emerged after it initially appeared to have been subdued, it took weeks of public pressure and private lobbying by advisers and friends before Mr. Trump more frankly acknowledged the toll the resurgent virus has taken across the American South and West.

Even some of the harshest critics of Republican leadership said they did not think that Mr. Cains death would cause much reflection inside the party.

Evan McMullin, who ran against Mr. Trump as a third-party candidate in 2016, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Cain was the first senior casualty of the science denial Trump cult.

In an interview, Mr. McMullin said he had little hope this was a wake-up call. I wish that was the case, he said. Many voters who support the president live in a totally different, alternate information environment in which the news of Herman Cains death his visit to the Trump rally, his decision to not wear a mask wont reach them.

Mr. Cain was eager to display his disregard for the experts and their warnings. Before the Trump rally in Tulsa, which local public health officials had urged the campaign to postpone, Mr. Cain urged people to Ignore the outrage and to defy the left-wing shaming!

Mr. Trump did at one point reschedule the rally, but only after an outpouring of anger that it had been scheduled for the day of Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the emancipation of slaves.

When the rally went forward on June 20, Mr. Cain, one of the most prominent African-American Trump supporters and a member of his Black Voices for Trump coalition, posed for a photo with other Black attendees. None, including him, wore masks.

A few hours before the event, the campaign had disclosed that six Trump campaign staff members who had been working on the rally had tested positive for the coronavirus during a routine screening.

Mr. Cain tested positive on June 29. On July 2, his staff announced that he had been hospitalized. Weighing in on the no-mask policy for a Trump rally planned at Mount Rushmore on July 3, Mr. Cains Twitter feed was approving: PEOPLE ARE FED UP!

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Will Herman Cains Death Change Republican Views on the Virus and Masks? - The New York Times

After Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential race, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, commissioned an internal party study to examine why the party had won the popular vote only once since 1988.

The results of that so-called autopsy were fairly obvious: The party needed to appeal to more people of color, reach out to younger voters, become more welcoming to women. Those conclusions were presented as not only a political necessity but also a moral mandate if the Republican Party were to be a governing party in a rapidly changing America.

Then Donald Trump emerged and the party threw all those conclusions out the window with an almost audible sigh of relief: Thank God we can win without pretending we really care about this stuff. That reaction was sadly predictable.

I spent decades working to elect Republicans, including Mr. Romney and four other presidential candidates, and I am here to bear reluctant witness that Mr. Trump didnt hijack the Republican Party. He is the logical conclusion of what the party became over the past 50 or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race-baiting, self-deception and anger that now dominate it. Hold Donald Trump up to a mirror and that bulging, scowling orange face is todays Republican Party.

I saw the warning signs but ignored them and chose to believe what I wanted to believe: The party wasnt just a white grievance party; there was still a big tent; the others guys were worse. Many of us in the party saw this dark side and told ourselves it was a recessive gene. We were wrong. It turned out to be the dominant gene.

What is most telling is that the Republican Party actively embraced, supported, defended and now enthusiastically identifies with a man who eagerly exploits the nations racial tensions. In our system, political parties should serve a circuit breaker function. The Republican Party never pulled the switch.

Racism is the original sin of the modern Republican Party. While many Republicans today like to mourn the absence of an intellectual voice like William Buckley, it is often overlooked that Mr. Buckley began his career as a racist defending segregation.

In the Richard Nixon White House, Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips wrote a re-election campaign memo headed Dividing the Democrats in which they outlined what would come to be known as the Southern Strategy. It assumes there is little Republicans can do to attract Black Americans and details a two-pronged strategy: Utilize Black support of Democrats to alienate white voters while trying to decrease that support by sowing dissension within the Democratic Party.

That strategy has worked so well that it was copied by the Russians in their 2016 efforts to help elect Mr. Trump.

In the 2000 George W. Bush campaign, on which I worked, we acknowledged the failures of Republicans to attract significant nonwhite support. When Mr. Bush called himself a compassionate conservative, some on the right attacked him, calling it an admission that conservatism had not been compassionate. That was true; it had not been. Many of us believed we could steer the party to that kinder, gentler place his father described. We were wrong.

Reading Mr. Bushs 2000 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention now is like stumbling across a document from a lost civilization, with its calls for humility, service and compassion. That message couldnt attract 20 percent in a Republican presidential primary today. If there really was a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, we lost.

There is a collective blame to be shared by those of us who have created the modern Republican Party that has so egregiously betrayed the principles it claimed to represent. My jaccuse is against us all, not a few individuals who were the most egregious.

How did this happen? How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy and the national debt in a matter of months? You dont. The obvious answer is those beliefs werent deeply held. What others and I thought were bedrock values turned out to be mere marketing slogans easily replaced. I feel like the guy working for Bernie Madoff who thought they were actually beating the market.

Mr. Trump has served a useful purpose by exposing the deep flaws of a major American political party. Like a heavy truck driven over a bridge on the edge of failure, he has made it impossible to ignore the long-developing fault lines of the Republican Party. A party rooted in decency and values does not embrace the anger that Mr. Trump peddles as patriotism.

This collapse of a major political party as a moral governing force is unlike anything we have seen in modern American politics. The closest parallel is the demise of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, when the dissonance between what the party said it stood for and what citizens actually experienced was so great that it was unsustainable.

This election should signal a day of reckoning for the party and all who claim it as a political identity. Will it? Ive given up hope that there are any lines of decency or normalcy that once crossed would move Republican leaders to act as if they took their oath of office more seriously than their allegiance to party. Only fear will motivate the party to change the cold fear only defeat can bring.

That defeat is looming. Will it bring desperately needed change to the Republican Party? Id like to say Im hopeful. But that would be a lie and there have been too many lies for too long.

Stuart Stevens is a Republican political consultant and the author of the forthcoming book It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, from which this essay is adapted.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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I Hope This Is Not Another Lie About the Republican Party - The New York Times

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CLARKSVILLENOW) The Red River Republican Women honored 100 years of womens voting rights with a Wine Tasting & Pre-Election Party Friday, July 31 at Wonderland Cafe.

Candidates speaking at the event included Tennessee State Senator Bill Powers, State Representative Jay Reedy, Circuit Court Judge Katy Olita, Montgomery County Commissioner Jason Knight, John Dawson, Doug Englen, Jeff Bryant, Wendy Davis, Joe Shakeenab and Sharon Massey Grimes.

The event was a fundraiser for the organization which is a local group sanctioned by the Tennessee Republican Party designed to accommodate working women. President Corinthia Elder said they wanted to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Womens Suffrage movement.

Women voters have certainly changed the complexion of our society as a whole and have opened new opportunities for service that continues to expand in the present day, Elder said.

Funds raised will support Republican candidates in the upcoming August 6 Tennessee State Primary and the Montgomery County General Election as well as the November 3 Tennessee State General and Clarksville City Election.

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Red River Republican Women mark 100 years of women voting - Clarksville Now

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) Is Tennessees Republican primary for U.S. Senate the nastiest in the country as the national publication POLITICO calls it?

It was a question for the two top GOP candidates today in midst of their negative ad blitz.

William Francis Hagerty IV is not a regular guy. He is entitled, self-dealing. His friends in the ruling class are not like you and me, said one ad for Manny Sethi that has been playing statewide.

Trump conservatives cant trust Manny Sethi. Sethi served on the board of the Massachusetts Medical Society, an organization that supported Obamacare, said an ad getting similar airplay for Bill Hagerty.

The commercials are just a bit of the ad blitz from the two frontrunners in Tennessees Republican Senate primary. They are part of POLITICOs nastiest pronouncement and so is Hagertys pronunciation of Sethis name while questioning his opponents conservative credentials.

During an early voting event on July 17, Hagerty repeatedly pronounced his main opponents name as SED-dee instead of SEH-thee.

While appearing on This Week with Bob Mueller on Thursday, Hagerty who served as the presidents U.S. Ambassador to Japan did not mention his opponent by name while repeating themes seen in the ads.

We have a situation where you have a Democrat running in a Republican primary, Hagerty told News 2s Mueller. You have someone defending Obamacare.

At exactly the same time Thursday, Sethi who is a Vanderbilt trauma surgeon, held a town hall in a Nashville suburb where he tried to counter President Trumps endorsement of Hagerty for the Republican Senate nomination.

Now more than ever, we have got to support the president, got to have his back, Sethi told the town hall event.

Like Hagerty, Sethi was asked about the race becoming the countrys nastiest Republican primary and he, too, returned to themes seen in ads.

Yeah, I think its really unfortunate, began Sethi. Its driven by my opponent and his millions of dollars of swamp money.

As the primary approaches, those ads will continue to be everywhere with whatever the candidates want to say about each other.

As for issues they might face as a U.S. Senator, both the Republican candidates expressed skepticism at extending federal unemployment payments of $600 a week.

Bob Muellers entire interview with Hagerty can be seen Saturday at 6 p.m. on News 2.

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Top Senate candidates respond to their race called the countrys nastiest Republican primary - WATE 6 On Your Side