On Wednesday, the anti-Trump group Principles First held an event for the tradcons to plot their next moves.
Milwaukee –– While its most enthusiastic attendees are Team MAGA, the Republican National Convention is a magnet for people of varying ideologies. Fallen celebrities in search of image rehabilitation show up, as do Democrats looking for some network airtime. But also present are the people who have the most robust reason not to attend: America’s small cadre of Never Trumpers.
For the Never Trumpers, seeing tens of thousands of rabid MAGA fans drive the final nail into the tradcon coffin has to feel like they are national school-lunch health czar Michelle Obama attending a hot-dog eating contest. They have to watch a grotesque dismantling of everything they hold dear, day after day.
On Wednesday, the anti-Trump group Principles First held an event for the tradcons to plot their next moves. Held at Pabst Best Place outside of the RNC security perimeter, speakers included former RNC chair Michael Steele, MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes, and conservative lawyer George Conway.
“Americans are frustrated with the state of our politics, the state of our parties, the state of our partisan primary system,” said Principles First founder Heath Mayo, noting that Wisconsin is actually the birthplace of the Republican Party. He reminded the room of attendees that the GOP formed because the parties of the day “were not responding to the core principles they believed in.”
Mayo quoted Winston Churchill, who said, “Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.”
“The Republican Party is sick,” said Mayo. “It has been led astray by populist demagogues and it has abandoned its principles.”
Numerous speakers voiced complaints about the content at the RNC so far, with Mayo criticizing the decision to allow Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to address the convention on Monday night. “Since when did we become a Liz Warren Republican Party?” he said. “It makes no sense to me.”
Speaker Charlie Sykes, a longtime Milwaukee radio talk-show host, hit the current party for its lack of “decency,” warning that America might be headed for one of the “great humanitarian disasters” in history if it tried to deport 10 million illegal immigrants.
But Sykes flipped Mayo’s formulation as to how the Republican Party started. “What if it turns out that we are the Whigs?” he said, comparing the traditional conservatives to the party people like Abraham Lincoln left behind. “People are turning away from us,” he said. “We need to gird ourselves for a decades-long fight,” he added.
Sykes further suggested America is in a “revolutionary period,” but Never Trumpers shouldn’t allow themselves to form their own ideological bubble. He said the Left has created its own bubble, which is leading to the disastrous renomination of Joe Biden. “Neither side can afford not to listen to the warnings,” he said, suggesting anti-Trump voters to ask themselves, “Am I in a bubble too?”
Sykes said he wasn’t a fan of Trump’s pick of Ohio senator J. D. Vance as his running mate. “People without a moral core are very dangerous,” he said, referring to Vance’s transformation from Trump critic to Trump ally. He also rapped the VP pick for his tendency to side with Vladimir Putin in the war Ukraine is fighting with Russia. “J. D. Vance is the oligarch’s b****,” said Sykes.
Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican Party, all but told attendees to vote for Biden, or at least vote against Trump, who he said “is not worth the paper his name is written on.”
“The Republican Party I led needs the biggest political enema it has ever seen, and the only way they get it is if we give it to them,” Steele said. “And the only way we give it to them is through our vote.”
He said not to believe the polls showing Biden trailing Trump. “The polls could be wrong because you haven’t cast a vote,” he said.
“Joe Biden could be in his underwear sitting in the corner drooling with Covid and he’d still have my vote,” Steele said. “I’m not here to tell you how to vote, you just can’t sit this one out.”
Steele, who hosts his own weekend show on MSNBC, took a shot at the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan for the next Trump administration, particularly the section that recommends putting 50,000 federal employees on a list if they demonstrate perceived opposition to Donald Trump. “When you fire 50,000 federal employees because they wrote a check to a Democrat, does the next Democrat who’s elected get to fire all those people?” Steele said.
Steele bemoaned the status of the party of which he had been a member since he was 17 years old. “My party’s in the sh***** right now,” he said.