The super PACs backing former President Donald Trump's political rivals for the 2024 nomination were "money pits" that did next to nothing to challenge the former president's dominance, former GOP strategist Tim Miller wrote in a scorching analysis for The Bulwark.
This comes after extensive reporting about Never Back Down, the super PAC of failed Trump rival and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who himself called out how inept their efforts had been.
"Much can be said about about the incompetence, self-dealing, and cowardice of the Republicans who were charged with challenging Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign. Marc Caputo covered it colorfully and thoroughly earlier this week," wrote Miller. "But after you have cut through all the tweets and trivia and backbiting and biorhythmic disruption that spilled out of the DeSantis 'campaign' — if you can even call it that — there is one strategic choice that stands out."
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Namely, wrote Miller, records show that the major super PACs representing the non-Trump Republican candidates -- like DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, which raised a combined $225 million -- spent just 2 percent of their revenue targeting Trump, versus supporting their candidates and attacking the non-Trump rivals.
And when these super PACs did target Trump, contended Miller, they only released "limp-wristed" efforts.
"With these resources, Trump’s opponents availed themselves of the best Republican consultants money could buy," wrote Miller. "Those political strategists in turn had titans of industry — millionaires and billionaires — at their disposal. These wealthy individuals were willing to offer their private-sector expertise and burn ungodly sums of their personal fortune to advance the interests of Tim, or Nikki, or Ron. DeSantis even had the world’s richest man giving him free rein and free PR in his personal global town-square on the campaign’s announcement day."
A similar pattern happened in 2016, noted Miller. But "at least in 2016, those choices were defensible. We had never seen a candidate like Trump before, and there was reason to believe that in the end, Republican voters would come to their senses — as they had in every other nominating contest in living memory. We didn’t know what we didn’t know."
"There was no excuse to make the same mistakes this time," he concluded.
