The Trumpist trolling of The Lincoln Project

I've been arguing for awhile that if Trumpism is understood not just as ideology but as a particular style -- trolling, for lack of a better word -- than the NeverTrump Republicans who make up The Lincoln Project are fighting Trump with Trumpism.

At Vox, Jane Coaston more or less confirms this theory:

One tweet describes President Trump’s campaign as a “criminal enterprise.” An ad — with the hashtag #TrumpIsNotWell — shows the president struggling to walk down a ramp, and another mocks the size of the crowd at Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, saying, “You’ve probably heard this before, but it was smaller than we expected.”

They’re all from a political action group called the Lincoln Project, and according to co-founder Reed Galen, they’re meant for one specific audience: Trump himself.

“We have what we call ‘an audience of one’ strategy, which is clearly aimed at the president,” Galen told me.

So: Trolling.

As Coaston notes: "Some observers have argued that the campaign operatives responsible for the Lincoln Project are, through their deep ties to the pre-Trump GOP, indirectly responsible for his rise. Lincoln Project board members helped George H.W. Bush win office in 1988 and George W. Bush win reelection in 2004, as well as down-ballot races where their ads often featured the same kind of fearmongering they now appear to abhor."

More than that, some TLP folks -- and their allies -- cultivated a conservative culture of trolling long before that word became Internet currency. They're the ones who encouraged (and benefited from) the rise of figures like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter as "thought leaders" for the conservative base. Those figures, in turn, were foundational to Trump's rise.

Lots of liberals like to share TLP ads on Twitter when they come out, and it's easy to get gleeful at their audaciousness. But if Trumpism is both the result of and cause of a vulgarizing political scene that is, ultimately, bad for Democracy, then what might feel good -- and maybe even be effective, in the short run -- might ultimately be destructive.