More on the alternate convention.
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“Well over 12,000 people pre-registered to participate over the course of our four-day event. That includes 466 delegates who are trusted activists in our movement from all 50 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico,” says McMulllin. “They’ll be participating in a presidential straw poll, the results of which will be announced tonight, and ratifying a declaration of principles later in the week.”
The event will feature the sort of respected figures who no longer have a place in the GOP. Speakers include former CIA director Michael Hayden, former FBI director James Comey, former RNC chairman Michael Steele, former members of Congress David Jolly and Charlie Dent, TV pundits Amanda Carpenter and S.E. Cupp, human rights activist and chess champion Garry Kasparov, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and former commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez. Hayden tells me, “The GOP has no platform because the wanna-be autocrat Trump hopes to be totally unchained in a second administration so that he can indulge his uninformed lunatic whims. And his whims can change from minute to minute, hour to hour.”
Finn is among many NeverTrump women actively working to defeat Trump. She says, “I’ve participated in the last four GOP conventions, worked three Republican presidential campaigns and once invested my career in a healthier party. Now, like many former Republicans, particularly young-ish women like me, I’ve lost hope in today’s GOP as my political home.” She adds, “The GOP’s decision to forgo developing a party platform at this year’s convention solidifies their descent into a party that stands for nothing but ‘winning,’ Trump and needling the press and liberals. Our Founders are weeping in their graves.”
McMullin deplores the RNC platform of simply a paean to Trump. “Unfortunately, at this point, it’s not a surprise that instead of producing a platform of ideas and policy solutions this year, party leaders are literally just reaffirming their loyalty to a man, who also doesn’t have any worthy ideas or solutions.” He adds, “Until the party realizes that and returns to its founding principles and unifying ideas to advance the American cause, it will continue to be a destructive force and experience electoral defeat.”
The question is whether there is a critical mass of such people who might form the nucleus of a reformed Republican Party — or alternatively, a new party that might eventually replace the GOP as the second national party. More important than the politics, however, will be the ability to generate ideas that are distinct from the Democrats and from the right-wing populism that has infected the GOP. “Trump emerged as the perfect reflection of a party that long ago abandoned serious policy ideas and principled ideology,” Jolly tells me. “The Convention on Founding Principles will hopefully reflect what a new party could one day look like.”
