Zombie Weekend in Washington

It is difficult if not impossible to parody that which has already become a parody of itself. And perhaps, when taking the measure of last weekend’s Principles First conference in downtown Washington, parody isn’t quite the right register to sound. Disgust will do just fine.

The Principles First summit bills itself as the anti-MAGA alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. As such, the timing of the summit, which on Sunday afternoon was briefly interrupted by a bomb scare, was not accidental. A few miles south, across the river from Alexandria, CPAC was underway. Vice President J.D. Vance, fresh off giving our European friends a lesson on how self-styled democracies ought to behave, was greeted with a hero’s welcome. By comparison, the star power at Principles First was decidedly second rate—dinner theater for DeSantis die-hards.

The lineup of guest speakers was a who’s who of a Republican Party that thankfully no longer exists.

Among the headliners was arch-neocon Bill Kristol. Kristol has been a fixture on the speakers and podcast circuit in the years since Rupert Murdoch shut down his neoconservative rag, The Weekly Standard. As Tucker Carlson once observed, “Under ordinary circumstances, Bill Kristol would be famous for being wrong.” But credit where it is due, he’s taken that talent and turned himself into the country’s premier NeverTrump grifter.

In the eyes of the self-styled defenders of the republic such as those who gathered at the Principles First conference, Kristol isn’t among the leading villains of our recent and blood-soaked past but a source of solace. He reassures his dwindling conservative followers that the age of Trump is an aberration—the country has momentarily taken leave of its senses—and we, the true elite, only have to wait out the Barbarians. 

And then there’s Alberto Gonzales. For an organization which bills itself as one in opposition to lawlessness and an out-of-control chief executive, the inclusion of Gonzales, former attorney general under George W. Bush, is really a bit of a head scratcher. According to the human rights attorney Scott Horton, even a cursory inventory of the crimes committed by Gonzales would include “perjury, violations of the Hatch Act, misrepresentations to Congress, suborning perjury and obstruction of justice,” to say nothing of his role “in the introduction of torture into intelligence interrogation practices in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Convention on Land Warfare.” 

There were of course the usual suspects from the Conservatism Inc. echo chamber. Alumni from the ill-fated Weekly Standard who now run under the banners of The Bulwark and The Dispatch were among the featured guests. Stephen Hayes, author of a 2004 book about the alleged “connection” between Obama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein appeared alongside Jonah Goldberg, another purveyor, in the early years of the War on Terror, of the conspiracy theory that Iraq’s leader and al Qaeda were in cahoots. Goldberg lectured the audience about the importance of truth in politics.

At some point, it gets to be enough already. 

These ghosts of GOP past have, since 2016, with the enthusiastic help of corporate and legacy media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC, laundered their reputations and emerged as lonely, courageous and principled defenders of the American constitutional order—but only after having spent most of the last 25 years doing their level best to trash it.

The real reason these people fell out with Trump was because they perceived him not as a threat to the constitution but as a threat to their careers. Look at Christie and the super-hawk John Bolton. These opportunists looked at Trump with stars in their eyes when he gave them a seat at the table—but once he pulled the chair out from under them, they became his most vociferous opponents. You’d have to be about as clueless as former Pentagon press secretary Alyssa Farah (who, as it happens, was another honored guest at Principles First) to think there’s anything more at work at one of these confabs than grievance—grievance that Trump took away their party without so much as breaking a sweat.

The backdrop to these cross-town conferences is the brewing battle over Elbridge Colby — whose confirmation as undersecretary of defense for policy is being contested by the Ghosts of Republican Party Past.

The GOP’s Zombie Caucus, including Senators Mitch McConnell, Roger Wicker, Lisa Murkowski and of course, the very same members of Conservatism Inc. that brought us, among other niceties, Iraq, Guantanamo, torture, black sites, ISIS, and a new and dangerous nuclear arms race, are determined to derail Colby for being insufficiently in awe of neoconservatism’s track record since 9/11.

The problem facing the Zombie Caucus is that even in the event they are able to block Colby their brand of Republicanism has about as much popular appeal as another Christie presidential run: zero. 

Meanwhile, As Politico pointed out last week, Vance and other administration officials are sending “a clear message to the world that Republican foreign policy as they have known it is dead — and they’re not sorry about it.”

Looks like the undead at Principles First have yet to get the memo.