The Lincoln Project has not been suddenly exposed making common cause with Democrats — making common cause with Democrats in opposition to Trump and Trumpism is its raison d’être. Maybe some conservative critics do not think that is a good or worthy undertaking, but those who are engaging with the Lincoln Project have an intellectual obligation to address the actual argument being advanced; i.e., that Donald Trump and his administration represent a special kind of awful that requires bipartisan repudiation. Agree or disagree, that is the question raised by the Lincoln Project. The fact that the Lincoln Project sometimes airs ads on Morning Joe is entirely beside the point.

What is most worrisome to me is not that Republicans do not by and large agree with the Lincoln Project’s critique but that they are incapable of taking it seriously. They dismiss it as being of interest only to four self-aggrandizing politicos, but there is a great deal of evidence that this is simply not the case. Biden currently leads Trump in the polls in Texas, and Republicans are in danger of losing their Senate majority. This is not because the nation is disappointed in the performance of John Cornyn. The issue is Trump. Pretending that the issue is Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, awful as they are, won’t do.

Rich Lowry is lamentably correct in noting that the Lincoln Project has embraced the “coarsened political culture to which Donald Trump has contributed more than his share.” The stupidity, pettiness, and lowness of the Lincoln Project’s advertisements remind me of an observation about the totalitarian systems of the 20th century: that the power of Adolf Hitler and his kind could best be judged by the fact that they forced their enemies to imitate them. The fundamentally Trumpist aesthetic and Twitter-troll rhetorical style of the Lincoln Project is the most predictable development of the political year: Trump and the Lincoln Project are products of precisely the same beef-witted social-media culture. It would be better if Trump’s opponents were less Trumpish. But both in the case of Trump and in the case of his critics, style ought really to be a concern secondary to that of substance.