“Project 2026, this is what we need to aim for, to push back … in the midterms of next year,” Bedenbaugh told Raw Story.
Bedenbaugh, who ran last year as an independent in South Carolina's 3rd Congressional District, losing to Rep. Sheri Biggs (R-SC), said the forthcoming midterms would be the “most important” election in the U.S. “since 1876 after the end of Reconstruction,” as Democrats seek to take back at least one chamber of Congress and put the brakes on Trump’s unrelenting takeover.
Mike Bedenbaugh (provided photo)
Seeking to “open up the system, make it more representative,” Bedenbaugh calls for nonpartisan reforms including banning stock trading by members of Congress, enacting term limits for legislators and prohibiting former legislators from working as lobbyists or joining corporate boards immediately after leaving office.
He also proposes reducing the influence of corporate money on elections and shrinking the size of congressional districts, to make them more responsive to constituents.
Bedenbaugh says he presents his "95 Theses” as “a way to communicate what [priest and theologian Martin] Luther was trying to communicate against a corrupted 16th-century Catholic Church” when he nailed his 95 demands to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church in Germany in 1517, an action that eventually triggered the Protestant Reformation.
Five hundred years later, in the U.S., Bedenbaugh sees “a corrupted 21st-century federal republic, and how over the past-century, we've lost a lot of standards that need to be rebuilt.”
Bedenbaugh said he had a “Hail Mary” idea: to propose 10 to 15 independent-minded members of the U.S. House of Representatives form a “Fulcrum Caucus," holding out on voting for legislation unless reforms are included in bill language.
“Over the past century, what was made to be a balanced federal republic I think has been destroyed for a monopolistic government system that now Donald Trump is the ultimate example of,” Bedenbaugh said.
“I think just through tweaking a few dials, it can be made right, and people would be happier with that in the long run.”
‘It’s about control’
Bedenbaugh said he was inspired to write his book after watching the first Republican presidential primary debate in August 2015, the year of Trump’s first serious campaign for office.
Disgusted by the “absolute vulgar bullying” on display, Bedenbaugh turned to the writing of the Founding Fathers, particularly George Washington’s Farewell Address, delivered by the first president in 1796 as a warning against excesses by political parties and their ambitious leaders.
"Reviving Our Republic" (provided image)
Bedenbaugh then traveled to Washington, D.C., and read Ron Chernow’s biography Washington: A Life, to look at how the Founding Fathers would respond to today’s politics.
“[Washington] predicted exactly what was happening and his concern for that,” Bedenbaugh said.
The stakes are high as the U.S. heads down an authoritarian path under Trump in his second term, even more so than his first, Bedenbaugh said, fearing “a death knell of our nation if we allow that to happen, and that's the trajectory I think is very realistic."
“What's happened is Donald Trump has created a safe space for all these folks who have this tendency to want to yield sovereignty and feel safe with a leader," he said.
“One of the biggest hazards in our nation is that these folks now are organized in a way that it's about power. It's about control and only their perspective of how the nation should be run.”
Looking to Project 2025, Bedenbaugh said its “Christian nationalist” approach left him “infuriated.”
On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump repeatedly denied knowledge of or involvement with Project 2025. Since taking office, he has embraced the plan.
One community-driven Project 2025 Tracker estimates that at least 48 percent of the project’s goals have been achieved since Trump was inaugurated in January, including efforts to slash government funding and eliminate diversity programs.
Bedenbaugh said: “Project 2026 is really just something to show an alternative to what 2025 is saying, and there is a way to fix what they're saying is the problem, but only through the original foundational issues of what made this country amazing.”
Those issues, Bedenbaugh said, were identified by “a diverse group of people who all aspire to have one thing: liv[ing] in happiness with your children, being successful, being in your community, being part of it, free, and … thriv[ing]. That's all we want.”
