Spielman was among those who offered testimony in advertisements from Republican Voters Against Trump, who was one of the groups that challenged the President. The Lincoln Project is another key voice of the Never Trump movement, producing some of the most ferocious places ever run against a sitting President. Both groups promised to spend a few million and scramble to collect more, but even a successful fundraising effort would only produce a fraction of what the prospective investment in the race.

“The most powerful office in the world needs more than a weak, unworthy, and unsteady President,” said a narrator in a recent Lincoln Project advertisement, which sharply questions Trump’s suitability for office. “Trump doesn’t have the power to lead, or the character to admit it.”

Television and digital campaigns, along with the acerbic tweet, were basically designed to give Trump his own dose of medicine. But it also aims to see whether a broader Republican plot might be more receptive to making Trump President one day, given his handling of the corona virus crisis, hurt economy and racial injustice in America.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign declined to comment on the Never Trump movement. Presidential aides previously considered the movement “irrelevant” and “pathetic.”

‘Our focus in 2020 is really thinking about real people’

“It’s not that Donald Trump only gave us material for advertising,” said Sarah Longwell, Republican strategic director against Trump. “It’s about Donald Trump who doesn’t deserve to be President, and everyone sees that now.”

Longwell, a longtime Republican strategist who has worked to defeat Trump since before he was elected, has conducted focus groups with hundreds of Republicans who support the President. The talk led him to believe that many voters were looking for a permit structure – or, perhaps, requiring a bit of like-minded encouragement – to leave Trump.

“In 2016, he was nominated, everyone was a bit panicked and we all tried to defeat him and obviously we failed,” Longwell said. “One of the things we did at the time was a group of elites from the Reagan and Bush era signed a letter, talking about why they didn’t like Trump, but so much support for Trump was a game of anti-elitism. So our focus in 2020 was really rightly thinking of real people and real voices and how they think of Donald Trump after seeing him become President for the past four years. “

Women will be at the center of the movement, Longwell said, just as they were during the 2018 midterm elections. And the President’s handling of the coronavirus crisis and racial riots this year has raised sentiment that there was no Trump controversy or previous scandal, he said.

“I think women will make Donald Trump lose this election,” Longwell said. “Now what we see is not just a gender gap. This is a gender gap with women, especially suburban women walking away in droves.”

Republican Voters Against Trump target voters through an initial $ 10 million campaign in North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – all states that win Trump in 2016. The group takes testimony from voters across the country and hopes to expand to others stated .

Tim Miller, political director for Republican Voters Against Trump and former adviser Jeb Bush, said this effort marked one of the first persuasion campaigns against the President. This group seeks to reach voters who identify as conservative or Republican and encourage them to support Biden rather than Trump or third-party candidates.

“There is no formal campaign to defeat Trump because no one really thinks he will win,” Miller said. “Now he is the President. The things that mentioned him previously did not affect people’s lives. Now they really have a negative impact on people.”

“Does he have a base?”

One of the biggest differences between the Never Trump movement in 2020 versus 2016, he said, was that Hillary Clinton was not seen as an acceptable choice for many Republicans, but Biden was.

Less than four months before the election, other Republicans also came out to support the expected Democratic candidates.

A new group, consisting of alumni of the George W. Bush administration, has joined the fray, with the slogan: “We work for W. We support Joe.” Another group, the PAC Right Side – led by former Ohio GOP Chair Matt Borges and Anthony Scaramucci, who worked as White House communications directors for 10 days in the Trump administration – also targeted voters in the main battlefield states.

It was the advertisements and videos of the Lincoln Project that received the most attention – including from the President himself, who attacked organizers in a post midnight tweet as “RINO losers.” The group, which placed advertisements on Fox News when he thought Trump might be watching, consisted of chief advisers for the campaigns of former President Bush and former GOP presidential candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney.

George Conway, whose wife, Kellyanne Conway, serves as Trump’s advisor, is one of the founders of the Lincoln Project. He strongly opposed the President, something he explained on social media, but he declined to comment on the advertisement or the group’s mission.

However, even as concerns escalated among Republican officials about the prospect of them holding the White House and the Senate, the life blood of opposition to Trump still came from Democrats and independents, not from Republicans. It is still an open question what influence, if any, the Never Trump movement will produce in November.

Republicans involved in the group are well aware that Trump is controlling the Republicans, but they insist that a gap is growing in their party and the resistance movement is growing calmly.

“There will always be a core of support that will never move away from Donald Trump,” Longwell said. “Does he have a base? Of course. But you need a larger political coalition to win the election. His political coalition is shrinking day by day.”