WASHINGTON — A top conservative group is trying to coax wealthy Republican donors to help fund a multimillion-dollar ad campaign and other efforts against Donald Trump — the latest sign of growing anxiety within GOP circles over the businessman’s dominance in the 2016 race.
But some GOP financiers are skeptical of the plan, fearing it will only fuel Trump’s outsider pitch. The lack of consensus illustrates how Trump, for the moment, is a problem without a clear solution in the eyes of party leaders worried that his controversial rhetoric and tactics are hurting the Republican brand.
Officials with the Club for Growth — a prominent anti-tax group that frequently targets Republicans it deems insufficiently conservative — said Friday that the organization began reaching out to its network of donors in recent weeks to help pay for an anti-Trump TV ad blitz. The organization’s super PAC, Club for Growth Action, would run the ads, the group said.
“What we’ve said to our members is that ‘Trump is a liability to the future of the nation,’ and we’ve asked them for support for Club for Growth Action to get that message out,” Club for Growth president David McIntosh said in a statement to The Washington Post. “We’re also doing research, like we do on candidates, into his economic policy positions. At this point, we haven’t taken anything off the table — be it TV ads or any other means — to expose Trump as not being an economic conservative, and as actually being the worst kind of politician.”
Trump bashed the Club for Growth for its decision and said, as he has previously, that McIntosh asked him in June to donate $1 million to the group.
“They’re critical of me because I wouldn’t give them a million dollars,” Trump said in an interview with The Post. “They came to my office, the president of the Club for Growth came to my office; he asked for a million dollars. He asked for it in writing, just to show you how truly stupid he is. I said, ‘You must be kidding.’ I had no interest in doing it. … We told them no, and immediately thereafter, he came after Trump.”
While there is anxiety in the GOP about Trump’s rise, no organized effort to undercut him has emerged. Among those staying out of the fray are donors allied with billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who are sticking with plans to avoid involvement in the primary process, according to people familiar with internal discussions and who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Club for Growth has issued research papers on a number of other Republican candidates, but McIntosh said the group concluded that there was “no need to do a white paper on Donald Trump” after he launched his campaign because he was “not a serious Republican candidate.”
Trump, who appears to relish fighting with critics of all kinds, pointed to his business career in attacking the Club for Growth’s signature mission. “I built an incredible company. Who’s more about growth than I am?”
