When the Bourbons were put back on the French throne in 1814, after a quarter century of revolution and Napoleon, the line that stuck to them was that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. It took them years to earn it.
The American alt right needed six days.
Today Politico reported the launch of American Ascent, a 501(c)(4) that plans to recruit and train a new generation of America First candidates to replace aging Republican officeholders, starting in 2028. Its premise is that the party that just got flattened was too old and too soft.
Consider who is doing the diagnosing:
Ryan Neuhaus runs it. He is the former Heritage Foundation chief of staff who was reassigned last year in the fallout from Kevin Roberts’ video defending Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with Nick Fuentes.1
Thomas Klingenstein is paying for it, with an initial $12 million. He chairs the Claremont Institute’s board and has spent years arguing that the country is already in a civil war of the cold variety.
Andy Surabian, the longtime aide to JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr., leads the American Leadership PAC, which will operate in tandem with the group.
Turning Point Action, the Claremont Institute and the Oversight Project are listed as partners. Turning Point Action has already endorsed Vance for 2028.
As Jeff Quinton notes, that is the Heritage-Claremont-Turning Point complex, more or less intact. These are the same institutions that staffed and scripted the administration voters just repudiated. Their finding, after a review lasting less than a week, is that the fault lies with other Republicans.
It’s a conclusion, though hardly the correct one.
The numbers they are explaining away deserve a look. Currently, Democrats sit at 254 seats in the House with 19 races uncalled, and 54 Senate seats with Alaska and Mississippi still out. It is the largest Democratic House majority since 2008. The national House vote margin is approaching 13 points.
American Ascent’s reading is that Republicans lost on the economy and the Iran war. Bradley Devlin, the former Daily Signal editor handling the group’s communications, told Politico the party did not lose on immigration, which he called its best issue. Mike Howell of the Oversight Project went further and argued that young voters still want mass deportation and need officeholders who will deliver it. Trump had his own blame list ready before a single vote was cast.
The exit polls say otherwise:
58 percent of voters said the administration’s immigration enforcement has gone too far. Twenty percent said it has not gone far enough.
60 percent disapprove of the job ICE is doing, 50 percent strongly.
61 percent said immigrants do more to help the country than hurt it.
Voters aged 18 to 29 backed Democrats 70 to 28, a 33-point swing from 2024.
The case that immigration is still a winner rests on one number. Among voters who named immigration the most important issue facing the country, Republicans won 89 percent. Those voters were 14 percent of the electorate. A party can win nine in ten of these one-issue voters and still lose 40 seats and counting, which is what happened.
There is a real distinction buried in here, and American Ascent is on the wrong side of it. Voters still trust Republicans slightly more than Democrats to handle immigration, 43 to 41. The border is closed, and the public noticed. What the public rejected was the deportation program, the removal of people with jobs and families whose only offense was crossing years ago. American Ascent proposes to keep the part that lost and train younger men to say it.
Even Donald Trump has worked this out. He told 60 Minutes on Sunday that the crackdown hurt as well as helped, and that deporting people with good jobs whose one violation was entering illegally was “too tough.” When Donald Trump is the moderate in your coalition’s immigration debate, the coalition has a problem. (He had also just made Stephen Miller his chief of staff, so nobody should mistake the insight for a change of course.)
Then look at where the new group plans to compete. Surabian’s PAC will concentrate on open seats in safe red districts. American Ascent has published data ranking 2028 opportunities by an incumbent’s age, retirement plans, and fundraising. Like most of these plans, it’s designed to win Republican primaries in places Republicans already win. It adds nothing to 162. The object is to make sure the seats that survive belong to the right faction: a smaller party, with Klingenstein and Surabian owning more of it. As a business plan for the nonprofits and consultants involved, it is sound. As a response to Tuesday, it is a non sequitur. It’s just another group wanting to be the biggest fish in an ever-shrinking pond.
They are right about some things. The Republican bench is old. The Iran war was a political disaster, and Vance said so himself last week. Jackson Hines, the group’s vice president, summed up the pitch as “old ideas are for old people.” (The $12 million is coming from a donor in his seventies.) But mass deportation is an idea too, and the youngest voters in the country just rejected the party selling it by 42 points.
After Mitt Romney lost in 2012, the RNC at least commissioned an autopsy. The Growth and Opportunity Project ran about 100 pages, told the party to make its peace with Hispanic voters on immigration, and was ignored within two years. That was the old way: write down the right answer and then fail to act on it. The new way skips the writing-down.
The Fellowship for American Ascent starts taking applications in early December. Its graduates will be trained to win the seats Republicans still hold. There are fewer of them than a week ago, and American Ascent seems unconcerned with why.
Neuhaus was adamant to Politico that this is not a Vance political project. The partner list includes the group that has already endorsed Vance for president and a PAC run by Vance’s political adviser. Draw your own conclusions.