The Last Whimpers of a Dying Political Movement
A gathering last weekend in our nation’s capital is yet more evidence that fanaticism, dogmatism, and leader worship are a big draw in American politics. However, I’m not referring to Donald Trump’s “MAGA Republican extremists,” to use President Biden’s shameful term for Americans who support the president. Instead, it was a summit put on by “Principles First,” a coalition that’s chock-full of D.C. insiders, “conservative” turncoats who are now lauded by the media, and commentators who’ve been wrong about virtually every major political battle since at least the George W. Bush administration.
This crowd has clothed the present regime in the skin suit of Ronald Reagan. They genuinely seem to believe that a platform of exporting democracy abroad, tax cuts as the eternal answer to every economic problem, gay marriage, and genuflecting to the Left’s demands is “principled conservatism.” Losing gracefully is encoded in their DNA; being shellacked ad infinitum is the only thing they’re good at. Taking money from George Soros and other leftist billionaires, getting gigs on MSNBC to bash Republicans nonstop, and voting for Kamala Harris is apparently evidence of moral, principled, and courageous public servants.
The recent Principles First summit in D.C. featured “principled leaders” like Cassidy Hutchinson, who lied during sworn testimony that President Trump grabbed the wheel of the “Beast” from his driver on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to get to the melee at the Capitol. Another supposed paragon of principles is former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who spent lavishly on updating his office, private plane trips and limo rides, and other accouterments while the GOP needed all the funds it could muster against the Obama political machine (that Steele ever occupied a top position within the GOP’s ranks explains much about the decrepit state of the pre-Trump Republican Party).
Principles First founder Heath Mayo demonstrated his principles by outlandishly blaming Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for a Black Hawk helicopter colliding with an American Airlines jet at Reagan National Airport days after Trump’s inauguration. Another show of principles came from Julia Spiegel, who has served as legal counsel for California Governor Gavin Newsom and founded the Reproductive Freedom Alliance. Spiegel openly praised Maine Governor Janet Mills for allowing girls in men’s sports, with cheers and loud clapping from some in the audience. And, of course, there is the failed journalist and political prognosticator Bill Kristol, who contended that the Deep State is “far preferable” to a constitutionally-elected president in Donald Trump.
The Swamp-based summit didn’t just feature the usual group of grifters, hacks, and lightweights: Russell Moore and David French were also in attendance. During their segment on stage, French pointed to Mitch McConnell’s plummeting approval numbers as an example of the demise of “principled conservatism.” This is the same McConnell who has been in the U.S. Senate since 1985 and had overseen the GOP’s decline into perpetual loserdom in election after election until an outsider fundamentally transformed the party. Furthermore, as Peter Schweizer has documented, McConnell and his wife, former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, have gotten obscenely rich from Chao’s father’s considerable connections in China. All of this, French promises us, is True Conservatism.
Though Stephen Wolfe and I, among many others, have made this case numerous times before, it bears repeating: public Christians like Moore and French are working hard to Christianize the present regime, reconciling Christians with their dhimmitude status. While Moore and French continue to lie about tens of millions of Christians, claiming that they worship raw power and have sold their souls for Trump, white evangelicals clearly aren’t listening. They have a far better sense of the political stakes than their supposed betters. Eighty-two percent voted for Donald Trump in 2024, which is an uptick from both 2016 and 2020.
As Moore and French’s constituency shrinks, look for them to continue to launch direct attacks against evangelicals in the form of op-eds and long-form essays and also indirect subterfuge as they try to prevent Christians from working to secure their political interests. But these efforts will ultimately be unsuccessful. As the culture has already started to shift away from the negative world, the antics of Moore and French will be seen for what they really are. Their days of playacting as martyrs, complete with cushy jobs and extravagant paychecks, will have less of a draw as more and more Christians sense a growing opportunity to reassert themselves in the political arena.
Principles Firsters aren’t living in reality, however: for them, the Soviets and Nazis are perpetually on the march. The world teeters on the brink of a worldwide tyranny headed by Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, and Nayib Bukele. We are supposed to believe that Donald Trump—the man who abided by court decisions with which he disagreed during his first term—is a dictator who may soon be sending dissenters to reeducation camps that pipe in Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson 24/7. Simply opening relations with a head of state like Putin is viewed as blatant treason by members of the Principles First squad. This is the childish world of make-believe they inhabit.
The Principles First squad has pledged their loyalty to a set of abstractions that serve to bolster the power and prestige of the ruling class—not patriotic, flesh-and-blood Americans who seek to secure the blessings of liberty for their posterity. They happily support an endless string of foreign policy disasters for the U.S. as they receive their sinecures, speaking gigs, and bookings on networks that run interference on behalf of the regime. They think nothing of violating the sovereignty of other countries in the name of imposing sham, corrupt “democracies” that America’s founders would have utterly condemned as pointless, self-defeating, and ruinous for our nation.
The Principles First crowd stands for more of the same reckless “free trade” deals that have helped hollow out the heartland. More propositional nationhood, more importing of “true Americans” from the Third World, and more Deep State-led coup attempts. And the very things they’ve claimed to support for years—decades even—such as cutting the bureaucracy and government waste, are now an ominous sign of impending tyranny when Donald Trump’s administration does it.
What Reason reporter Billy Binion said of the two major political parties ironically describes the Principles First gaggle themselves: “I think both parties are unfortunately held captive to a very small minority of people who have the most extreme views and hog the microphone.” This was said at an event that featured representatives of a “very small minority of people” who have “the most extreme views and hog the microphone”—a movement that has zero national constituency to speak of.
Rigidity, burying one’s head in the sand, clinging to ideology—these are the characteristics of a dying political movement. As we shift into the digital age, Principles Firsters will undoubtedly remain desperately trying to hold on to tired political formulas that no longer obtain in our age of realignment.
Nice article that highlights the differences but seems to possibly miss one: talking vs. doing. The current administration is shining a bright light on this distinction.
Making a point from a biased position, selective focus is a useful tool. And that is what we see in the above article. How did Sabo prove that Trump was not a dictator? By citing examples where Trump had no choice but to comply with court orders in his previous presidency. Did Sabo notice that Trump is purging the government so that his loyalists are filling a multitude of key spots. His cabinet picks for the most part are unqualified. As one article from Le Journal de Montréal said, during his 1st presidency, at least there were adults in the room with Trump, but not this time.
At the least, Trump is easily confused as evidenced by his temporary claim that Zelensky was the aggressor in Russia’s war with Ukraine. His confusion is also evidenced by his thinking that implementing McKinley’s protectionism will have the same positive results today as they did back in the day even though today’s economic context is far different than during McKinley’s presidency.
And, btw, though there are no soviets to battle anymore, Germany is finding that one of its conservative parties has a number of its key people with ties to the Neo-Nazism or the past. And though no longer Communist, Russia’s leader punishes free speech at home, has political rivals and critics attacked and even killed, and has unjustifiably invaded Ukraine. Trump was right on one point where he said that NATO cannot be in the future for Ukraine. Here we should note that when the Dems promoted NATO to the Eastern European nations, it broke an agreement and understanding that Gorbachev had with George H.W. Bush. But Trump’s disdain for our now former allies can be seen in the punishing tariffs he is threatening Canada and the EU with. And his siding with North Korea and Iran in opposing UN resolutions that charged Russia with being the aggressor does not reflect well on Trump.
Perhaps Sabo would like to comment on Sir Alex Younger’s, a former head of England’s MI6, assessment of the new political order. That the US has now joined Russia and China as being ruled by a strongman type leader as seen in Trump’s ambition to annex 2 western nations and take control of the Panama Canal just as Putin and Jinping have their eyes on so far unacquired, by the other strongmen leaders, real estate in the form of other nations. At least formally, the US has opposed such ventures by Russia and China. Now, because of Trump, we have possibly formed a new axis of evil with Russia and China.
It’s not that the old status quo was not horrible, it was. But Trump’s dreams of regional hegemony rather than global hegemony shows that hegemony is still being sought after and his apparent goal of reconstructing the US into the image of Russia is worse. Though under Trump, the US is no longer seeking a global hegemony, hegemony is hegemony.
Well done!
Here you reveal the spirit that moves you:
“Moore and French … white evangelicals clearly aren’t listening. They have a far better sense of the political stakes than their supposed betters. Eighty-two percent voted for Donald Trump in 2024, which is an uptick from both 2016 and 2020.
As Moore and French’s constituency shrinks, look for them to continue to launch direct attacks against evangelicals in the form of op-eds and long-form essays and also indirect subterfuge as they try to prevent Christians from working to secure their political interests. But these efforts will ultimately be unsuccessful. As the culture has already started to shift away from the negative world, the antics of Moore and French will be seen for what they really are. Their days of playacting as martyrs, complete with cushy jobs and extravagant paychecks, will have less of a draw as more and more Christians sense a growing opportunity to reassert themselves in the political arena.”
You call out two believers in the Gospel for discussing what they believe the Gospel requires. While you summon the Chtulhu of omnipresent political power … that, as any simple Bible reader know IS NOT the Good News from Jesus of Nazareth. You announce a anti-Christian idolatry and blasphemy that ‘Christians crave and deserve political power’. Jesus taught differently, very clearly. You have deliberately blasphemed against the author of the Gospel with your deviant teaching. You call others out for their ‘elite’ jobs while you have a soft, plush, privileged job in the very wealthy Claremont Institute with other elite snots who really know nothing – or care nothing – for welders, food pantry workers, CNAs in nursing homes, delivery drivers for the Dollar Store, and the workers in the Dollar Store, etc.
You’ve disclosed your God to be Chtulhu of disorder, injustice, and unrighteous power – not Yahweh who holds all power, of the ‘Left’ and the ‘Right’ to account, who reviles un-Godliness in the Left’s ‘social justice’ and the Right’s ‘might makes right’ justice. Whose living Word announced in Jesus’ great Sermon that God treasures and upholds the pure in heart, those who struggle for justice, the peace makers not the power brokers … the ‘lowly’ as Apostle Paul said it … and as countless faithful Christians have been martyred, worked out their salvation, served the needs of those God dearly loves and the creation God dearly made.
Now we know WHO YOU ARE. Hallelujah! Thanks be to God, Creator of the Universe, who hears every syllable of your Idolatry. Praise the God who is coming to burn away your – and all – idolatries and blasphemies with a roaring wrath.
As a boomer who realized I was a conservative in college when Reagan was elected, these con artists sucked me and millions into their loser ways, until Trump. That’s 35 years of losing, and their lies don’t sell anymore, thank God.