Over here at Stand Up Republic "Principles First" event at D.C. Nat'l Press Club - where they're trying to counter-program CPAC - a pretty full house and Bill Kristol kicks off his remarks with, "the spirit of this gathering is more important" than any conclusion attendees reach.
To a question about how/why conservatives haven't had an inclusive message on race, Peter Wehner acknowledges the "racially tinged" Nixon southern strategy and Mona Charen says the 1619 project, though she doesn't agree with everything, "had a lot of things to recommend it."
Tara Setmayer quotes William F. Buckley and says that never-Trumpers should wear their current GOP party outcast status as a "badge of valor" because, looking through the lens of genuine conservatism, it's the Trumpers who are the real apostates.
Rick Wilson: "Donald Trump is not, and has never been, a conservative."
A lot of talk from a lot of the Principles First panelists, on more than one panel, about what happens when/if Trump's expansion of executive power is in the hands of a Democrat such as Bernie Sanders.
Stand Up Republic co-founder, former presidential candidate and panel moderator Mindy Finn asks panelists, "Is principled conservatism dead, politically" and if not, how can it be brought back to life?
Tim Miller calls DJT Jr. a mini-me and says, "I think principled conservatism is kind of in a coma, for a while."
Talking about GOP losses at the state/local/congressional level, Rick Wilson says one thing for never-Trump Republicans to embrace is the idea that "Trumpism doesn't scale," in many places around the country, and that "it's political poison" down ballot.
Some of the panelists seem to want to name names and call out people who've abandoned genuine conservatism, and some who want to keep it general.
Arguably, the most important point made on this panel is by Mindy Finn, talking about the difference between campaigning and governing, and "the danger of what's performative becoming reality."
Audience member takes issue with Rick Wilson calling Trumpers "tin-toothed rubes." Wilson asks what the questioner thinks of the president calling never-Trumpers "human scum," then says he's tired of hearing this from the former "f*ck your feelings" crowd. Getting frothy in here.
Panel now doing a brief cost/benefit analysis of Sarah Palin being on the Republican ticket in 2008, and what that led to.
Tara Setmayer notes that one of the reasons it's so hard to challenge Trump in the primary (Gov. Weld is still in it, Rep. Walsh and Gov. Sanford are out) is that the Republican Party has cancelled primaries to stifle Trump's competition.
Mindy Finn, who was ticketed with Evan McMullin in 2016, gets a laugh saying that running against Trump "isn't that scary."
Representation, it seems, matters: When asked about her motto going forward, Tara Setmayer quotes Ida B. Wells.
They're breaking for lunch now, but more panels will follow this afternoon...
And we're back...
Rule-of-law panel now, and former U.S. attorney Donald Ayer describes an evolution/erosion of DoJ norms beyond what a lot of people see, toward "Bill Barr's vision of an executive who is all-powerful."
GMU law prof. Ilya Somin criticizes new SCOTUS ruling in the case of Mexican teenager shot across border by U.S. Border Patrol agent, saying Court's rationale for finding that boy's family's suit can't go forward has "no basis in the text or original meaning of the Constitution."
Stuart Gerson, former acting AG, urges the audience to support politicians who are willing to stand up for the Constitution, the document "that keeps us free from authoritarianism."
After being asked why more people aren't out in the streets protesting the erosion the rule of law, Donald Ayer says Americans "gotta get off our butts" because this is the first time they haven't been able to take a functioning political system for granted.
Carrie Cordero saying that former FBI director James Comey "was fired in order for an investigation to get shut down" and that that should have been something that got more Americans worked up and worried about rule of law.
Cordero says the fact that the Senate wouldn't call additional witnesses in President Trump's impeachment trial "should have been a thing that exercised the country."
Moderator asks who is the bigger threat, Trump or Sanders, Donald Ayer jumps in immediately and says, "Trump, completely, obviously."
Ilya Somin takes a different tack, says his real fear is the movement of the Overton Window in both directions, says if Sen. Sanders becomes president "it will be a menace to us for a long time to come" and "I wouldn't vote for either."
In the rule of law Q&A, one attendee says that she "actually read the Mueller Report, to the best of my ability," and gets a round of applause.
Carrie Cordero says Mueller Report did two things: "it previewed the Ukraine scandal" and says that Congress should have included some of the most egregious instances of obstruction of justice in the articles of impeachment, and by not doing it "gave a pass on the conduct."
Ilya Somin says he wishes impeachment inquiry focused more on Trump's alleged effort to take $ Congress had appropriated for one purpose and to apply it for another purpose, as opposed to focusing on the impeachability of his alleged enlistment of a foreign power in his campaign.
Foreign policy panel now, and Tom Nichols is introduced as a professional Twitter "air-travel ethicist" and "resident fellow inside Stephen Miller's head."
Tom Nichols sifting the definitions of neoconservative, conservative foreign policy, "crusading liberal" foreign policy by describing conservative policy as the "notion that we're not just one country in the world" that "we are exceptional" but that "tempers it with prudence."
Tom Nichols: Americans can't continue to be a Reagan-esque "shining city on a hill" if, in foreign policy, everything is transactional and our "interests" and our "values" are going to be treated as completely separate.
Will Wilkinson describing the way that the years of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. have resulted in a wider segment of Americans being uninterested in "promiscuous" foreign entanglements.
Patrick Chovanec says a similarity between Trump supporters and self-described democratic socialists is that there are many in both camps who "tend to see trade as win-lose zero-sum."
Tom Nichols says Americans don't much care about foreign policy norms, expertise, or the foreign policy establishment, until there's a crisis, then there's a tendency to point fingers. Says: "If you don't like the Washington rules, wait until you get a look at the Beijing rules."
First heckler walks to the front, interrupts Tom Nichols, his comments were mostly inaudible from up here in the press gallery. Security escorted him out without much incident.
Tom Nichols goes on to say that what we're seeing now in the Levant with Turkey and Syria, or in other parts of the world, is "what the world looks like without an America."
Will Wilkinson says that, in the foreign policy context, "Donald Trump's conception of the national interest is Donald Trump's interest."
Next, and last panel of the day is up: "Conservatism and the Future: What Comes Next?" Moderated by Sarah Quinlan, with Benji Backer, Shermichael Singleton, Rina Shah and Reed Howard.
Quinlan starts out saying that for a lot of the conservatives gathered here, the question is, "What next?"
Backer says that Trump's election "woke me up to the realization that our movement did not do a good enough job of leading on environmental issues."
Backer says principled conservatism "is not laughing off Trump voters for their beliefs" and isn't "voting for a socialist." But it's also not "silencing your political allies who do not march in lockstep with you" and not "changing your value set because you do like someone."
Singleton says he hasn't attended CPAC for 3 years because the conservative movement right now "doesn't really have a place for disparate ideas."
Singleton says he's not opposed to evolution within the GOP, and quotes Edmund Burke: "we reform in order to conserve." But says he's concerned that "the change that we see" with Trump "disrupts the internal structures of this republic" in some ways.
Singleton now running through stats showing that, in his view, the trend among younger voters shows relatively weaker support for Republicans and conservative ideas.
Rina Shah says that as a conservative millennial, woman of color and daughter of immigrants, part of how she sees the Stand Up Republic Principles First gathering is as "group therapy" for never-Trumpers.
Shah says she still can't be a Democrat, and that never-Trumpers need to find a way to continue to be relevant, "otherwise the left is just going to continue to take over."
Howard makes this point: In the past, a mistake that conservatives at times "drew the circle really small on who can be an American and what it means to be a conservative."
Reed Howard: "America is always being re-founded." Says we should think of figures like Harriet Tubman as founders.
Backer says that if you want a different kind of conservative movement, that appeals to a more diverse and younger electorate, "we have to make conservatism sexy."
Adds, for him, that starts with environmental/climate change issues.
Singleton saying that before conservatives go out with a message of capitalism and economic mobility, focus on the numbers that show among younger voters, socialism doesn't carry a negative connotation, and that black voters are mostly moderate-conservative, not progressive.
Here's that stat from Gallup, btw: news.gallup.com/poll/275792/re… In a January 2020 poll, 67% of African Americans self-describe as "moderate" or "conservative" as opposed to "liberal."
To be clear, the overwhelming majority of black voters, somewhere roughly around 90%, still vote for Democrats.
Clear that the younger cohort of speakers here is very emphatic about the need for conservatives and Republicans to embrace diverse constituencies. Earlier panels lamented that the 2013 GOP "autopsy" fell flat.
Singleton, who worked on campaigns for Romney, Carson, etc., addressing what he sees as the byproduct of Republican efforts to suppress the votes of people of color.
During last Q&A of the day, attendee says he's glad to have found some new role models among the panelists, says he lost respect for a lot of conservative/Republican role models in the Trump era. Round of applause.
Shah, who's South Asian American, Jain, a longtime GOP activist, says she grew up in Trump country, rural W. Va., and earlier said she won't vote for just any Dem (namely, Sanders), says "I refuse to stop blaming" Trump for the situation conservatives like her find themselves in.
Singleton says "when you're frickin' comfortable" and in power, it's too easy for elected officials who go along with the party line no matter what, and harder to have principles and think about how that affects different constituencies.
Shah ends with: I have brown kids, right now there are brown kids in cages, and it makes her "stomach churn." Encourages anyone who likes independents to think about supporting independent Rep. Justin Amash, rather than independent Sen. Sanders.
Heath Mayo wrapping things up here with closing remarks, it's getting pretty sparse up here in the makeshift balcony/press gallery, and I, dear reader, am out of here...
