As Donald Trump inches closer to securing the GOP presidential nomination, a super PAC leading the charge against him is urging top Republicans to form a massive “opposition force” to stop him before he gets that far.
Our Principles PAC, led by former Mitt Romney adviser Katie Packer, sent a three-page memo on the eve of the Nevada caucuses to dozens of conservative leaders, top-level political operatives, pundits and campaigns that contains a short “playbook” of tactics that can be used to defeat the billionaire White House hopeful.
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“In my nearly 30 years of political involvement, I have never seen a campaign where the frontrunner had no aggressive, strategic campaign launched against him,” Packer wrote, noting that just 4 percent of Republican-led spending on ads and voter contact this election cycle has been spent on challenging Trump.
Packer continues, “There is an increasing worry among many Republicans that we are about to nominate a candidate who shares none of the values our Party has held dear for decades and who will lead our Party to general election ruin in November. That candidate is Donald Trump and that fear is well founded.
“Many have asked me, “What can be done to stop Trump?” she wrote. “The answer is simple: TRY. That’s right. No one has stopped him because no one has really tried.”
According to Packer, the brash New York businessman is “a conservative of convenience” who cannot be trusted to “stand up for … conservative principles” if he is elected president. To stop him, she wrote, other candidates and Republican super PACs need to attack him on all of his controversial positions, instead of cherry-picking a few.
“Running ads on a single issue won’t stop Donald Trump,” Packer wrote. “Rather, it’s the cumulative effect of highlighting his positions.” She listed Trump’s past or current support for government-sponsored healthcare, partial-birth abortion, eminent domain and big bank bailouts, as well as his history of contributing large sums of money to liberal politicians such as Democratic presidential front-
The anti-Trump super PAC also claims that attacks against the GOP front-runner are more effective when voters are allowed to “draw their own conclusions.”
“Our research shows, overwhelmingly, that putting out information, in [Trump’s] own words, and then asking voters a few questions such as — ‘How much do you really know about Donald Trump?’ ‘Can we Trust him?’ — is the most effective route to highlighting his conservatism of convenience and moving voters to other candidates,” Packer wrote, adding that “Telling voters Donald Trump is a liar, a fraud, a liberal is counterproductive.”
Packer ends her call to action by charging that Trump is not qualified to handle what the next president will inherit. “The next President will have to deal with a $20 trillion debt, the appointment of several Supreme Court justices, a shaky economy, a government-run health care system that is failing the American people and our veterans, and great dangers from foreign threats.
“It is critical that the GOP candidate present a strong contrast with Hillary Clinton on policy, in order to unite our Party and the country and beat her in a general election,” she wrote, adding that Republicans need to lead a similar united effort against Trump.
“If all of us join forces in a concerted effort to expose his record and his rhetoric, it is possible to stop him,” Packer wrote. ” If not, we will have the nominee we deserve.”
