Club for Growth sides with Koch brothers: will support alternative candidates to Trump

Club for Growth, a Republican anti-Trump political action committee (PAC), will hold a donor retreat in Florida to which several GOP leaders have been invited. Among them are Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. Thus, this PAC joins the Koch brothers and will endorse other Republican candidates.

Club for Growth is a conservative never trumper lobby that believes in the need for limited government in office, cuts in government spending and substantial tax cuts, among other things. He believes that the chances of the GOP returning to the presidency of the United States are reduced if Donald Trump runs. "The party should be open to another candidate," said David McIntosh, president of Club for Growth.

This is not his first show of rejection of Trump. During the midterm election campaign, he endorsed candidates not aligned with the former president in the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries. His crusade against Trump had no effect, as J.D. Vance and Mehmet Öz, both under the former president's aegis, managed to win and become the Republican contenders in the state elections.

Not the first Republican rejection of Trump

Despite his antipathy towards Trump, McIntosh assured that Club for Growth would support the former president in case he turns out to be the Republican candidate for the 2024 elections, showing his loyalty to the GOP and his frontal opposition to Joe Biden.

Who does reject Donald Trump as the next Republican nominee for president is The Lincoln Project. This movement, initially founded as GOP-affiliated by Steve Schmidt - he worked on Republican election campaigns until 2018, when he decided to endorse the Democratic Party - abandoned its principles.

After Trump claimed victory in the 2016 Republican primary, Schmidt felt that the Trumpist ideological shift would hurt the GOP and argued that the former president "replaced conservatism with an empty faith led by a bogus prophet."

Another rejection, this time not from a movement, but from leaders of the GOP itself was from the Bush family. The 41st president, George H. W. Bush, chose to support Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, as did former first lady Barbara Bush. For their part, both former President George W. Bush and his brother Jeb Bush stopped short of endorsing other candidates, but did show their animosity toward Donald Trump.

Former White House hopeful Mitt Romney was involved in the founding of another never trumper movement: Our Principles PAC. This political action committee led by Katie Parker, a former Romney advisor, was dedicated to attacking Trump through advertising. Its members endorsed Marco Rubio in 2016, but the current Florida senator did not get to run in those Republican primaries.