Courage, Principle, and Second Guessing

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“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” — Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird

“Losing causes are the only ones worth fighting for,” Clarence Darrow (maybe)

Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel..

The remnant of principled conservatives — former Republicans exiled, excommunicated, shunned, and mocked as “irrelevant” in the Age of MAGA — gathered this weekend in Washington DC, remarkably unbowed by the strange new disrespect that accompanies defeat.

The event — the fifth summit of a group called Principles First¹ — is notable because it reminds us that (1) Trump/Muskism is not a coherent ideological outgrowth of principled conservatism, (2) there remain voices on the center right who still defy absorption in the cult, and (3) what political courage looks like.

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This weekend also got me thinking about Jen Psaki’s gibes about the Kamala Harris campaign. Of all the many blunders, disappointments, botched communications, and lost opportunities of the last four years, the former Biden spox has identified what she thinks was a cardinal error of the Harris campaign: it’s alignment with the Never Trump movement — and with Liz Cheney in particular.

“I don't think closing the campaign with a message about fighting democracy with a former Republican member of Congress was the right strategy," Psaki told Jon Stewart on his "The Weekly Show" podcast on Friday.

“I’m not saying that’s why they lost,” said Psaki. “What I’m saying is there were millions of people who didn’t turn out to vote, many of whom in the past have leaned toward Democratic issues, leaned toward Democratic candidates, and Trump somehow massively won on issues like the economy... That reality means that maybe something isn’t going well.”

This is not the first time that Psaki pointed a finger at the Never Trumpers. Days after Trump’s election, we got this: “Psaki: Democrats paid too much attention to anti-Trump GOP.”

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Admittedly, I’m biased here, but this seems like a rather large load of what I will euphemistically call piffle.² I’m certainly willing to concede that the whole Republicans-against-Trump thing was far less effective that we hoped, but the evidence that the Harris-Cheney outreach tanked her campaign is — and again — I’m being somewhat euphemistic — rather thin on the ground. (Were there progressive voters so horrified by Liz Cheney that they decided to sit out the election? Maybe, but I suspect they wouldn’t have voted for Harris in any case because… who the hell knows.)

At the time, lots of folks — including Psaki — seemed to think GOP outreach and support was not only a good idea, but also important.

After a joint Harris-Cheney event in October, she also seemed to support the idea: “‘Exactly what Haley voters have wanted to hear’: Psaki, experts react live to Harris-Cheney event.”

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But hindsight, rationalization, and CYA are a powerful combination. So it’s worth remembering — amidst the ruins of 2024 and the confused response to Trump’s reign of shock-and-awe — how utterly crucial it was to sound the claxons about the threat that Trump posed.

And, for all the second-guessing, no one sounded that alarm with more clarity or courage than Cheney.

No one tried harder to convince Republican voters that Trumpism was a betrayal rather that the fulfillment of their values. No one was more forceful in making the case that this was the moment to set aside party loyalties and ideological priors — that 2024 was not a normal choice between right and left; Democrat vs. Republican — than Cheney.

To be sure, it was unconventional and risky for Kamala Harris to reach out to Cheney as she did. But it was important, and it was gutsy, even if it is now easy to second-guess from the sidelines.

And this brings me back to the other ragtag group of rejects — and I count myself very much among them — who now find themselves cast into outer darkness by the GOP, even as influential Democrats try to convince themselves that they don’t need any stinkin’ allies on the right.

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I mean no disrespect to the many Democrats who are now manning the barricades, but they could learn something about political courage from this group. To be honest, its easy for those on the left to oppose Trumpism. It comes naturally. For many of the Never Trumpers, however, it meant losing pretty much everything: jobs, friends, and a political future. They did it anyway. And even in the face of what feels like total, comprehensive, all-encompassing defeat, they’re still in the fight.

Like Cheney, I think many of them had a deeper and more visceral understanding of the dangers of Trumpism than some on the left, who continue to see the struggle in more or less traditional ideological terms. But the exiles know that there is nothing normal about it at all, and that makes them important allies in the fights ahead.

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As for Jen Psaki, perhaps she and the Biden folks should spend more time looking in the mirror. This interview with George Clooney might be a good start.

And so it begins…

Seen at this weekend’s CPAC. Maybe its time to start taking this seriously?

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ICYMI

"He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”

Regrets? They Have a Few.

Nota Bene

Tom Nichols: A Friday-Night Massacre at the Pentagon

The message to the rest of the military could not be clearer. Trump loathed Brown’s predecessor, General Mark Milley, and has floated the idea that Milley should be executed for actions he took as chairman. (This idea came to him shortly after the publication of this magazine’s profile of Milley, by editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, which detailed how Milley protected the Constitution from Trump.)

Trump and Hegseth have announced their intentions to fire several other senior officers—and perhaps even most ominously, including the head lawyers of each of the services. Now that Trump has captured the intelligence services, the Justice Department, and the FBI, the military is the last piece he needs to establish the foundations for authoritarian control of the U.S. government. None of this has anything to do with effectiveness, or “lethality,” or promoting “warfighters,” or any other buzzwords. It is praetorianism, plain and simple.

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Susan Glasser: Trump’s Putinization of America

Back in 2019, Putin crowed in an interview with the Financial Times about the end of the “obsolete” liberal world order that had long since “outlived its purpose.” The President of the European Council at the time, Poland’s Donald Tusk, pushed back on him, insisting that what was “really obsolete” was Putin’s own heavy-handed brand of governance, with its “authoritarianism, personality cults, and the rule of oligarchs.” Just a few years later, reading that sentence evokes only sadness: it’s no longer just Putin’s Russia that threatens the foundations of Western liberal democracy but Trump’s Washington.

Sunday dogs

I’m in Maryland with the grandkids this weekend, so here’s a shot of their best buddy, Zeke:

1. I’m sorry I couldn’t join. It was my granddaughter’s fourth birthday party.

2. Actually, my bias runs pretty deep:

• Cheney, Sykes team up with Harris to pitch support for VP this fall

• Conservatives Cheney, Sykes record radio spots for Democrat Harris’ presidential campaign

• Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney, former talk show host Charlie Sykes campaign in Brookfield

• My piece in The Atlantic: Why Harris Is Joining Forces With the Never Trumpers

• An evening with Kamala and Liz

An Evening With Kamala and Liz