As you seek to understand Evan McMullin's opportunistic crusade to become Utah's next U.S. senator, you might consider the following facts that raise serious questions about Evan McMullin and Miles Taylor's misleading organization "RenewAmerica Movement," by means of which McMullin launched, and continues to maintain, his candidacy—
- Anti-Trumper Miles Taylor has claimed for months on his Twitter page that he is a "co-founder @RenewAmerica," citing his relatively new group's full name—"RenewAmerica Movement"—to support his claim.
- Read Miles Taylor's bio at Wikipedia to learn more about this new "movement."
- As a result of Miles Taylor's activism, an Oct. 2021 Business Insider article reported: "Renew America will campaign for 11 Democrats and nine GOP Trump critics including Rep. Liz Cheney."
- Bloomberg similarly reported on Miles Taylor's group in June 2021: "Anti-Trump Republicans Launch New Group to Impact Midterms."
- For more background on Miles Taylor's anti-Trump activism, see "RenewAmerica Movement" at Wikipedia.
- RenewAmerica Movement's website (renewamericamovement.com) provides detailed information about its leadership and staff (note that the image linked to here is an Oct. 1, 2022, screen capture, indicating the organization is still alive and functioning by name as of that date, notwithstanding its reported July 27 "merger" with Andrew Yang's "Forward Party," cited below).
- RenewAmerica Movement's YouTube page is also instructive. Note the low viewership numbers cited for an organization that seeks to cause "transformational" change in American politics by defeating "extremists" who support Donald Trump.
- In addition to RenewAmerica Movement's main logo, above, which focuses on the easy-to-remember term "RenewAmerica" and only incidentally on the extraneous term "Movement," the organization also touts a bold "RAM" logo that represents all three elements of the group's name and at the same time serves to simplify and legitimatize that name.
- Touch of humor: At Twitter, we came across an ironic twist on the RAM logo that we thought might bring some levity and irony to the group's recent merger with two other groups to form a hybrid political group that is evidently not clearly conservative or leftist. We've labeled it "Real-life hornless ram attempts forward progress with bucket" (VIDEO).
- Regarding the resultant "Forward Party" that Miles Taylor's anti-Trump activism has helped to create, here is a Wikipedia write-up about that "centrist" party, accompanied by a clarifying footnote below.[1]
- And for those who appreciate the outstanding writing at American Greatness (which we often feature), here is a repetition of "Ivan McMuffin rides again!" (American Greatness, March 10, 2022), which we posted in the above article "In defense of Mike Lee" under "Readings."
- Lastly, for those interested in the views of three women discussing Evan McMullin's credibility, here's a video ad from Club for Growth titled "Two sides of Evan McMullin," posted on Facebook.
[1] It should be noted that the above-linked write-up at Wikipedia (under “Forward Party”) claims that RenewAmerica Movement (RAM) and Serve America Movement (SAM) have "merged" with an existing political party named "Forward Party" (founded by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang) and have taken the mutually adopted name "Forward."
This claim of consolidation by these three groups under the mutually adopted name "Forward" is echoed by the following statement at the top of RenewAmerica Movement's website:
We are coming together with allies from across the political spectrum to create the launchpad for a new and transformational American political party operating under one name: Forward.
We have always said we would reform our broken two-party system or, if necessary, build an alternative. To that end, we are merging with the Serve America Movement and the Forward Party to start the process of building not just a new party, but a new kind of political party—one that represents the majority of Americans who are done with extremism, division, and dysfunction.
Taken together, these claims appear to suggest that any culmination of any merger among the organizations involved would occur only once it is clear the organizations have in fact changed their name to "Forward" (as in "Forward Party"). If there has been no real name change as required by this merger, then there would appear to be no real merger and the above claims would amount to mere rhetoric.
Unfortunately, even if this renaming is complete but still allows RenewAmerica Movement to informally use the name “RenewAmerica Movement” in its activities (as appears to be the case), this arrangement simply perpetuates Miles Taylor and Evan McMullin’s misuse of the name “RenewAmerica."
Typically, upon a formal merger of pre-existing U.S. organizations, the merging entities proceed to work together as literally one entity with a common formal name and drop their prior names altogether, no longer needing them—or they subordinate and clearly delimit any use of their prior names under the auspices of their shared new name. In the issue at hand, we see Miles Taylor and Evan McMullin clinging to the name RenewAmerica as though it were still their rightful “brand”—which it clearly is not—and continuing to fundraise using it, and to use it to describe their political activities.
Since our own 20-year-old organization, RenewAmerica, has a rightful claim to the exclusive use of that name—a name officially registered and recognized by the state of Utah as exclusively ours—the use of that name in Utah to describe the relatively new organization that Miles Taylor and Evan McMullin “co-founded,” as they claim on their RAM website, is, to say the least, irregular, unacceptable, and problematic. Our organization has nothing to do with the purposes or activities of Miles Taylor or Evan McMullin; is outraged that anyone might mistake these two political activists for us; and requests that these activists find another name for use by them and their associates in Utah.
How about the name they supposedly have already claimed to be united under with their sister organizations?
Left unremedied, the current situation leaves all three organizations involved in “Forward” to be engaged in using our name “RenewAmerica” inappropriately in their communications, both informal and formal.
The current situation is not just ironic, or distressing, we feel, but deserving of a good laugh. With apologies to Drew Carey and his show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?", here's a little skit that sums up the serious degree of the humor we see unfolding in the ambitious efforts of Evan McMullin and Miles Taylor to create "a new and transformational American political party." It's a video titled "this is hilarious...really funny........"—much as Evan and Miles' pretentious misuse of our name for grandiose political purposes strikes us as being. Think hornless RAM meets its bucket challenge.