mugwump
Moderates In Peril & The Denver Principles First Summit
Oct. 3rd | By Josh Ilano | Additional Reporting by Jared Engerman
On July 28th, our reporter Jared Engerman went to the Denver debut of the Principles First Traveling political series. He attended this one-night and one-night-only event as… the only participant below the age of 45. To the layman democrat, whose vision of the conservative has been some variant “CPAC-chic”— gaudy, opulent, formidable, and institutionally American— this conservative event proved to undermine that theatre. It was held in a modest
July 28th | Photos by Jared Engerman
Douglas County Public library event space with no stage, only a logoed backdrop and an American flag provided by the library. Hence, its aptly named, ideally intellectual; A modest distillation of the Republican-era when they had less decibels and bit more qualifying education.
Engerman saw in the audience trade workers during one of the few occasions they’d adorn a button up, small business owners in flowery blouses with densely ornate lace cuffs. Spattered throughout, recent retirees were the few blazer-wearers in the room worn besides the event’s panelists. Panelists were not sequestered in green rooms to drum up excitement. No, they hung around, cross legged, either on their phones or lightly intermingling, gliding through incredibly nascent or mundane topics. All before each of them excused themselves to a three-tray buffet station, stacking their paper plates with lukewarm deli-meat or pasta and filled plastic cups from a perspiring red punch jug. This is not to mention the entire deceit of Principles First’s Denver-Debut as they weren’t even in Denver proper! Instead, fourteen miles out, in the confines of the Denver-metro-area. Highlands Ranch, CO, where so many of the conservatives there are at the behest of Lockheed or Western Union contracts. However, there was one soul who was marked by the red-hot
republican aesthetic machine. A vestigial flourish from their abandoned MAGA brethren: a white trucker hat reading “Preserve the Constitution.”
First established in 2019, the non-profit organization Principles First has established themselves as a facts-forward, grassroots, conservative “alternative to the partisan doom-loop.” Or, according to their website, they seek to “anchor our politics to core values and ensure that those we elect today wield power of tomorrow.” Since Donald Trump took office this past January, his favorability rating amongst independents sank 7.1%. Meanwhile, only 15% of Democrats consider themselves “very united.” Thus, they’ve positioned themselves with the likes of the Our Princples PAC and the Lincoln Institute, as partisan breeching Anti-Trump establishments for the disillusioned independent or republican. During their Washington D.C. summit in February, they saw the likes of Mark Cuban, political commentator Tim Miller, and former governor of New Jersey Chris Christie. Even hardline democrats like Colorado’s governor Jared Polis were in attendance, who returned shortly for the beginning of this event (though he did not speak at the Colorado summit).
Left to Right | Eileen Laubacher, Matt Gianneschi, John A. Daly, Judge Michael Luttig
The panelists were Matt Gianneschi, the president of Colorado Mountain College, John A. Daly, a thriller novelist and podcaster, and Eileen Laubacher, a retired two-star admiral and democratic candidate for Colorado’s 4th congressional district.
However, when the keynote speaker took the stage, former Appellate Judge Michael Luttig set the event’s tone dim for the movement of the republican party. Luttig has been a prominent figure in the group of republicans critical to the current administration. Notably, he inserted himself as one of the instrumental influences in Former Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to disregard John Eastman’s evaluation to overturn the 2020 election. In Luttig’s talk, he established that there was no more “Republican Party,” but suggested that there is only MAGA and the democrats now. Further, he stated he believes there are no more Republicans in the United States like those of the last 50 years— they have been purged by Trump— and MAGA is not a Republican movement at all. When responding to an audience question regarding what to do when dissenting voices in the party are silenced, he claimed “There is nothing that can be done now by all of us. The die is cast.” Surmising that the mixture of an energized republican congress and the supreme court’s criminal immunity to Trump results in “only one government official in the United States right now.” Further exploring his opinion on the Supreme court, Luttig asserted that the Supreme Court is being brought the most important cases in history with a precedent lack of briefing, argument, or written statement.
“The day the supreme court decides without reasoning, it stops being a supreme court,” he said.
His wider issues amongst republican bureaucrats seem also prophetic in how these cases have evolved in the two months since his address. Vis-a-viz, when he got a call that the DOJ and Pam Bondi were posing a lawsuit to the entire federal court bend of the State of Maryland, he said “I didn’t even believe it…That’s not even possible.” Which, to the latter half of the statement, was exactly right. NPR reported on August 28th, that District Judge Thomas Cullen’s opinion was that “the court comes to the unsurprising conclusion that the United States District Court for the District of Maryland is entitled to sovereign immunity and will dismiss the Executive’s claims against it.” Luttig would later say, “[There has] never been an Attorney General of the United States like [Pam Bondi]...The woman knows nothing about the law. The only thing she does know is what Donald Trump tells her to do.” An anti-political-spoils sentiment that reverberated throughout Luttig's entire address, like calling appeals court judge Emil Bove’s “Trump’s henchman.” In a statement to the NYT this August regarding Bove’s code of conduct as a Judicial Official, Luttig said, “There’s no reason for him to be hanging around the Department of Justice for a month.”
After Luttig’s keynote speech, the rest of the panelists took the stage. For Gianneschi, Daly, and Laubacher, the phrase “as republicans,” “as conservatives,” or anything to identify the political stance of this event was not present. Rather, they focused on the qualms of the overall political climate and the concern of Coloradans. Gianneschi announced that Colorado Mountain College would launch a civics education initiative in the fall (since named the Center for Civics Education & Engagement). In terms of political partisanship and divide, the panel echoed Principles First’s values, emphasizing that the single most pressing issue is that party lines must agree on common facts. Daly later said, “People will let you down. Principles, not so much.”
All of this reminds me the of a Gilded-Age era epithet for those republican reformists opposed to the Federal spoil system. The intelligentsia that championed Adam Smith and Richard Cobden, called the “Mugwumps.” The reason I bring this to your attention is because this Principles First Convention stands at the same intersection as the Mugwumps did almost 200 years ago. Attempting to rally reason and intellectualism back into their party, while criticizing political loyalty.
However, just as independent favorability has sunk since January, 90% of republicans have persisted in favor of the Trump administration*. The standing effects of these separatist conservative movements such as the Lincoln project or Elon Musk’s “America Party” have either fizzled out or are so decentralized they result in no real-world effects. Just as the Mugwumps were efficient enough to proliferate their ideals on a certain small-scale level, they were just as much contested for ineffectively inducing any actual policy change. With a current administration who has galvanized so much of the youth population, the question of why Engerman was the only young-adult at this event only proves its only long-term viability to be with those who can empathize with a version of America that is dead.
The issue stands as this: RINO (Republican in Name Only) republicans and conservative leaning independents are like headless chickens moving in every direction besides left. Left with the fragments of a past when republicans like Ronald Reagan utilized tariffs with prolific economic results and George Bush launched wars with amazing widespread favorability. Perhaps principles are first, but so is a movement with action.
* Polling sourced via YouGov