POLITICO (“Never Trumpers rally in D.C., trying to find hope and a plan amid despair“):
Donald Trump used his primetime stage at the CPAC conference this Saturday to taunt the Bush Republicans, globalists and neocons.
A dozen miles away, at a lower-profile gathering in downtown D.C. the remnants of that bygone GOP era gathered in a hotel ballroom, attempting once more to plot their way out of the obscurity into which the former president relegated them.
The two-day confab at the luxury Conrad Hotel, billed as the Principles First Summit, was implicitly constructed as a counterweight to the MAGA-fied Conservative Political Action Conference. But the programming also served to underscore the often-bleak, occasionally hopeless, existence that comes with being a modern day anti-Trump Republican.
The fact that this was the second annual version of a conference that should ostensibly appeal to people like me and i am just hearing about it for the first time would indicate something of a failure of marketing. Or that they’re not actually trying to appeal to people like me.
Indeed, that they held at at “the luxury Conrad Hotel” and last year’s at the National Press Club is telling. CPAC was historically held in run-down hotels in DC before shifting out to National Harbor for more space and, finally, down to Florida. Holding it in an expensive, boutique venue virtually guarantees that only rich, older folks are going to attend.
The former Bush speechwriter turned columnist David Frum compared their effort to reform the party to blazing a landing strip in the middle of the jungle and simply waiting for planes to land. Former congressional candidate Clint Smith, who switched his party affiliation from Republican to Independent to challenge Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), described his state’s GOP as a forest of trees killed by an invasive species of beetle that crawls under bark to poison from the inside. Panels for the event included “Looking to 2024: Hope and Despair — but Mostly Despair” and “Can the GOP survive?”
If it all felt a bit dark at times, it was a reflection of the mood of some headliners.
“Trump is a cancer that’s now metastasized,” said former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), shortly after wrapping the latter panel. “So it’s going to kill the party more.”
It’s been roughly six years since the dawn of the Never Trump movement. And, over that time period, it has not had much success — at least when it comes to reforming the party to which its members once belonged. But those within it feel as if a new political opportunity could be at hand with Trump’s vulnerable position in the party. The question they’re confronting is whether they can capitalize on it. By Sunday, they’d had some indications of how it would go. Larry Hogan, the former Maryland governor long seen as a centrist alternative to Trump in 2024, announced he would be forgoing a run for the presidency.
Despair, once again.
So far, we have the guy who gave us Axis of Evil, a third-tier former Congresswoman, and some failed Congressional candidate of whom I’d never previously heard.
Organizers billed the gathering of 300 people from across the country as a strategy session for those who no longer feel welcome at the typical gathering of conservative activists. But it also provided a snapshot of how far the party has drifted in such a short period of time.
The summit itself is just three years old. A decade ago, many of the speakers at this year’s gathering were some of the party’s rising stars and top thinkers. Adam Kinzinger. Bill Kristol. John Kasich.
It’s plausible that Kinziger, first elected to Congress in 2011, was considered by someone to be a “rising star” in 2013. But Kristol was already a rather tired commentator by that point, having long run out of fresh ideas to push. Kasich ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2000 and had been in the political wilderness for a decade before successfully winning Ohio’s governorship in 2011. I voted for him in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and would probably have voted for him for President had he somehow won the nomination. But he was hardly a “rising” star or a top thinker at that point.
But those who held office have hit political dead ends (Comstock notably lost by 12 points in a 2018 Trump-charged suburban revolt) and the anti-Trump talking heads found their usual confines less inviting. Of the few current elected officials who spoke at the Principles First Summit, two of them were Democrats: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
The more immediate problem, however, may be that those in attendance don’t even agree on a way out of their conundrum. One example: Charlie Sykes, a Wisconsin political commentator, asked John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, to address the criticism that he refused to testify in Trump’s first impeachment trial but then profited by writing a tell-all book.
Some in attendance wanted to reform the GOP from within. Others were resigned to boosting moderate Democrats over election-denying populists.
The more fundamental problem here is that these people have no obvious purpose. Here’s the About section of the Summit website:
Principles First is excited to host a three-day grassroots summit at the Conrad Hotel in Washington, D.C. from Friday, March 3 through Sunday, March 5, 2023 to discuss and advance a more principled politics in the United States. We look forward to convening 2024 presidential hopefuls, current elected officials, conservative, liberal and independent speakers, thought leaders, and grassroots activists from around the country for three days of panels, speeches, networking, and substantive discussion about the meaning of conservatism today, the state of America’s core institutions, and how we can preserve and strengthen them in the years ahead.
So, I’m in favor of “a more principled politics in the United States.” But what principles, exactly? What, exactly, are “America’s core institutions”? Because if, say, the Electoral College is one of them, preserving and strengthening it actually serves to make our politics less principled. And, while listening to “conservative, liberal and independent speakers” might well be enlightening and help lead to “a more principled politics,” it’s rather at odds with “substantive discussion about the meaning of conservatism today.”
The Agenda is similarly confusing:
The 2023 Summit’s theme is Preserving American Institutions — Enduring institutions like the courts, capitalism, our education system, and free and fair elections are under attack from post-liberals. We are here to defend Madison’s vision and all of our sessions will be focused on the wisdom of classical liberalism. We are bringing together principled thinkers from the academy, elected members of Congress, and our sharpest thought leaders from across country over three days to discuss these current challenges facing the United States and the conservative movement and to articulate the principles that ought to shape both.
If one actually reads through the panels and speaker list, there are only two current professors (one of whom is a former Obama official) and zero sitting Members of Congress; Kinziger and Comstock are the only former ones. It’s mostly media types. And, despite the Never Trump branding, several former Trump officials, including Bolton, former press secretary Stephanie Grisham, and former Director of Strategic Communications (and current View co-host) Alyssa Farah Griffin. How in the hell do they qualify as “principled” anything?
The Event Partners consists of The Bulwark, several organizations of which I’ve never heard, and NO LABELS. The latter of which is decidedly not “conservative.”
This is just a bizarre hodgepodge of people, most of whom aren’t Democrats, who may or may not even oppose Trump or Trumpism.
Back to the POLITICO report:
“It turns out that once you let the toothpaste out of the tube, so to speak, demagoguery and bigotry and all that, some people like it. It’s hard to get it back.” Kristol said. “You can’t just give them a lecture.”
“We need to defeat the Trump Republicans. And if that means being with the Democrats for a while, that’s fine,” he added, suggesting a presidential ticket of Democrats Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. “That’s fine with me.”
But who the hell is “us”? Multiple people on the agenda were active members of the Trump administration in 2020. Two of them actively involved in spreading his lies via the press. Suddenly they’re willing to vote for a Whitmer-Spanberger ticket?! Color me skeptical. For that matter, who is it that’s going to nominate a Whitmer-Spanberger ticket? Surely not the Republicans. Or the Democrats. Indeed, I’d be shocked if Whitmer or Spanberger were willing to run against President Biden, particularly if it meant Trump or Ron DeSantis would win by default.
