It's Principles First for Heath Mayo
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You know, I've learned to be humble with the prognostications about what should and might happen. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America and a conservative America of America. Good night and good luck.

Hey folks, it's Rick Wilson. Welcome back to the Lincoln Project Podcast. I'm your host, as always. I am joined today by my friend Heath Mayo. He is the founder of Principles First. It is a group of center-right folks who are trying to preserve the fundamental principles that used to define what was the Republican Party, but now doesn't really have a political home in the two-party system. And he's hosting the Principles First Summit,

coming up this week, I guess. And it is important work that they do at Prince Holds First. So I wanted to welcome Heath to the show today. Heath, we've known each other for a minute. And let's go through where you see the conservative movement, not the MAGA movement, but the conservative movement as we stand here in the second week of February of the year of our Lord, 2025. All right.

Thanks, Rick. And thanks for having me on the pod. You know, look, the conservative movement today is certainly not, I mean, I would say it doesn't have a political party, a home. It's certainly not the Republican Party. I mean, just today, I think Trump came out and said that basically Zelensky and Ukraine started the war, that he was going to cozy up to Putin. I

This is a Republican Party of incompetence, of isolationism, of only looking out for ourselves, of corruption, honestly. We're cutting deals to not prosecute people like Eric Adams.

And so it's just nonsense. They don't believe in the Constitution. They don't believe in the rule of law. The Republican Party, in my view, has made its choice. It doesn't want to be a conservative party. It does not want to conserve the founding ideals that the country was built on that actually made America great over the last two and a half centuries.

And so the real question is for the rest of us, what are we going to do about it? I think there's a lot of disgruntled conservatives, but it's honestly a lot larger than the conservative, the traditional conservative movement, right? Because at this point, we're really conserving conservatives.

and the ideas that America stood for and what we represented, not just at home, but also abroad. So the conservative movement was always, even from the early days of Buckley, it was always evolving. It became more libertarian over time. And it

It elected Reagan, it elected Bush, it elected all of these folks. And now some elements of the old conservative coalition have indeed joined up with Trump to elect him. So I think it's always evolving. I think the core of it, though, the people who really believed in those ideas are now looking for a new political home. So I think we're in a state of flux with respect to where the movement goes. Yeah, I think that's right, Heath. And I've been watching this evolution, as you have and others have, and I

You know, that old three-legged stool of the Republican Party, of foreign policy conservatives, social conservatives, and economic conservatives. Right now, the foreign policy and the economic conservatives have had both legs sawed off, thrown away, and tossed into the bonfire. That's right. Increasingly, Trump is, it's not really free market capitalism. It's sort of broligarch, you know, oligarchic. Buy my meme coin that is worth it and just see how much my friends can make. Yeah, it's bizarre.

Yeah. And I think that the social conservatives have found somewhat of a home with Trump, but I'm not even sure that relationship survives forever because he's not really one of them at heart. Yeah. I mean, and you see even people like Mike Pence now, you know, God bless him. He's trying to stand on his own two feet out there. But, you know, RFK, the social conservatives did not like the pick of RFK, or at least they shouldn't have if they actually believed in what they were saying. I mean, this guy is

been anathema to everything evangelicals and, you know, conservatives in the South have ever preached with respect to everything from, you know, protecting the dignity of human life to, you know, not sleeping around with 40 different women and writing about it in your diary. I guess it's not a guy that you see sitting in the pews. I just want to say if Barack Obama had nominated somebody for that job who had that background, I,

I can't imagine the meltdown would have occurred on Fox News for months on end. There would have been effigies down, where I'm from at least, in East Texas. We'd have had an effigy down the street. The pitchforks and torches crowd would be out in force. So I want to talk a little bit about the summit. And you do the Principles First Summit every year to assemble folks who are –

oddly, they're not lost in their own values, but they're sort of lost in our political ecosystem right now. Tell us about the summit. Tell us how many people are going to be there, how people can find out more about it, and who's going to be speaking this year that you think folks would be interested in hearing from? Yeah, I mean, we're really excited about it, Rick. We've done... This is our fifth year of doing it, and it's, you know...

It started in 2019 really as a response to CPAC and the clowniness and the incompetence and just the absurdity that you see on that stage. But it's really grown since then as just like you said, folks who have kind of stood their ground, stood in the breach and taken tough stands. But it's also extended out to new parts of the coalition that it's going to take to

to get to 50 plus one in midterms or whatever the next cycle is, because ultimately this has got to be a political solution. We got to beat this guy and his movement at the ballot box. So we're excited to hear from people like Mark Cuban talking about what he's done in healthcare with cost plus drugs, trying to lower the price of prescription drugs for Americans and

We're interested to hear from Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, who's done a lot of things on housing to lower the cost of housing in his state. You know, people who have actually attacked the affordability crisis as opposed to, you know, hiking tariffs on our allies and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. I mean, that crap is not going to solve any of our pricing issues.

So I'm encouraged by that. But then we've also got, you know, we've got John Bolton talking about foreign policy and all the missteps that have gone on in Ukraine. I mean, nobody on our stage is perfect, I would say. But I think for the most part, everybody on our stage, you can count on to have at some point or another stood for principles and said, this is a line that I won't cross. We obviously all have different lines and we've got to figure out what those lines are together that we're not...

that are going to define where we're going as a movement. But this is an exercise of responding to these groups like CPAC, Turning Point USA, the Charlie Curtin Riff Fest that you see that goes on in Arizona and Mar-a-Lago. I mean, these guys are idiots, but they do –

have they figured out a way to package up energy by bringing people together and putting folks on a stage. And so it makes it look like Donald Trump Jr., you know, when he's sober and can deliver remarks, has a crowd of energy in front of him. Right. And so that that is a that is a

textbook ploy of political movements. It's effective because people who aren't in that room, who don't really aren't tuned into what's going on, they see that and they think, oh, you know, there must be a large popular movement of support behind these guys. And so a lot of it is path dependent. And I think Democrats certainly have not been good at this, but I think the rest of

rest of the sane majority have not been good at this generally because why because most people have day jobs they don't have time to go out and and you know stand in the middle of the field with donald trump while he rants for two hours so i think we've got to start doing i mean the same people in this country have to start coming together and doing this because we're losing our country bit by bit i mean this is the way that politics is played and so that is a big part of what the summit

summit is in dozens. I'm really excited for this weekend because we'll have a sold out crowd. We've sold over 1,100 tickets. There's a wait list. If people want to come, you can get on the wait list at principalsfirst.us. That's where you can learn more about it and get on the wait list. So tickets may open up, but it's going to be pretty packed. Well, that's a good problem to have here. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about, and it was somebody mentioned this, I was having a conversation this morning about

the success Trump had with younger men, with African-American men, with Hispanic men. And the person I was talking to said, well,

Don't think that Trump took them. He just rented them for this election, but there is a opportunity in there for a center, right idea because there is an entrepreneurial aspect to that part of the, of the, of the younger culture. There is an aspect of trying to achieve something they've, they felt blocked on for a long time. I'm wondering if you, cause, cause I think you're right. I mean, obviously like the principles first folks are attracting people. It's a, it's a, it's a mosaic, not a, not a single painting, but,

I wonder if you think there are some opportunities there to start expanding something into a new political party or movement that, I mean, the Democrats took those voters for granted.

Trump sort of gave them a big show, but won't deliver for them. I'm wondering what you think about that, these emerging demographics, especially in younger voters, about the appeal of something more centrist and center-right. Look, it's no question that the Democratic Party has a branding problem.

And it's part of the reason why Trump has been able to make such inroads with groups like young men, black young men, Hispanic young men, all of the different groups that the Democrats had just sort of blindly counted on. He made inroads with them. Why? Because politics isn't about just sort of saying certain buzzwords and saying that, you know, you care about the diversity, equity and inclusion. I mean, it's.

Those are nice words, but you really, I mean, those people work hard. They, everybody works hard just to say they believe in merit. They believe in the American dream. They believe in opportunity. And I'll tell you, I guarantee you those folks, all of them, no matter what race they are or gender or sexual orientation, they're

they're all embarrassed by Donald Trump. They don't really feel comfortable on that team. Nobody, no sane American would feel comfortable and proud to be on that team. But when they got in the voting booth, there was nothing exciting them on the other side. So I, whether it's a new party or new movement, I, I,

I think less in those terms. I think the key thing is to start to build community with these people, give them a place to come. We've lost them. We need to build them back and say, Hey, this guy, what he's selling you is not American principles. You know it. I know it. So let's, I mean, it's, it's a new ball game. It's a new day. It's a, it's a, it's a new, it's a new team and it's new ideas, new faces come together and let's figure out how to make the country great, uh,

you know, based on its foundational principles and not just on the whims of this one guy who's selling you sneakers and a meme coin that's worthless. I think one of the things about a lot of third parties start the wrong way. They start at the top. They try to win a presidential race. They don't build a community at the grassroots first. They don't build a community in the country first. And it struck me for a long time that the

The kind of activism that Principles First has done and some other groups have pushed for to start to build up groups of people who are able to articulate their hopes and fears about the future and to find a place to talk through like,

to not feel like they're the only person out there worried about these things or the only person out there, the only conservative out there who's freaked out about Donald Trump. The only economic conservative who thinks that tariffs are a shitty idea. The only foreign policy person who thinks that maybe we shouldn't capitulate to Putin.

That seems to be one of the things you guys have been successful at is starting to build that network of people, that classic network effect of folks at the grassroots where it doesn't start out with some super lofty pie-in-the-sky ambition that's going to take 10 bank shots to succeed at. That's right. You know, this is a completely volunteer grassroots effort, and it has grown from there. I mean, we just now – we have one staff member –

on our team i do this on a volunteer basis and we have an entire leadership committee that that does it on a volunteer basis every year to bring it together but it's not just the summit to your point i mean i do think it is about creating local nodes of civic engagement where you know people can invite

their colleagues or the people that are on the PTA with them to, Hey, come to this dinner that we're having. We're bringing in a couple of folks that were at the principal's first summit. We're going to have a dinner. And we've done those in Charleston and Michigan in Nashville, all over the country with rooms of, you know, a hundred,

150 people. So, I mean, the key idea here is that there are lots of us out there. I mean, this is not just folks meeting in a phone booth. There are a lot of Americans like this out there. And it just, if you start bringing them together in numbers, people will see that. And, you know, it's like the FOMO effect. People will say, hey, actually want to hang out with these serious people over here instead of these people talking about how vaccines are going to attract aliens. Yeah.

I think that's funny, but I think that's right, though, that there is a certain degree. I asked a congressman a couple years ago who had left. He couldn't do the MAGA thing. I said, so why did you stop having town hall meetings?

I said, you used to love doing the town hall meetings. You used to love to get like push back on some of the craziness. And he said, after a point, you know, the 57th QAnon guy in a row, it just stops being interesting anymore. And they just start to, you know, it's just sort of wears you down after a while. And I think this is sort of an antidote to that being worn down by all the loud noises and the craziness. And I will say that folks about people on the left as well, because if you don't think

The Gaza people, you know, are were as much noise and chaos as the QAnon people. You got another thing coming for where Americans really are on these kind of issues. We'll be right back.

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Thanks to IP. Learn more at PHRMA.org slash IPWorksWonders. And now, back to the show. Right. I think that's exactly right. And there's a lot of folks out there, like I say, you know, they're not going to all the political rallies, but they steadily vote every year. You know, they're tuned into the issues when it matters. But they, I mean, they're embarrassed by this stuff. They're embarrassed for our country that Kash Patel is the director of the FBI.

It's just embarrassing, quite frankly. And I think this rejection of embarrassment, the elevation of serious, competent leaders again, is something that we can start from. And I think it adds to sort of the principles of anti-corruption, of affordability. I mean, admitting that affordability is an issue and saying, look, Trump is not going to deliver on that.

on this. He's not competent enough to deliver on this. And you really need serious people in leadership who understand how to drive down prices to actually get the cost of consumer goods, of healthcare, of housing to come down. Similarly, I mean, foreign policy, it's like

Nobody thinks that Iraq and Afghanistan were good. Nobody thinks that mistakes weren't made. Nobody thinks that those were successful, perfectly executed endeavors of an American foreign policy. But just because that happened,

Doesn't mean that we can retreat from the world and forever just isolate ourselves from the world's problems. We still stand for things. And that that argument really hasn't been made. There's not a place where that argument is being made. It is sort of just, you know, Trump has run roughshod with this idea that like everyone is whoever advocates for any America standing for any kind of value must have been, you know, Donald Rumsfeld and, you know, must, you know, must have been, you know,

thinking that there were WMDs in Iraq. That's not the case. And how do you make that argument? I do think, yeah, I mean, I think that there are like sort of three thrusts in the foreign policy space right now that traditional conservatives like us go, my God, what are you talking about? First, the idea of Gaza, of putting American boots on the ground and lives and treasure and blood to build a golf resort in

branded by Jared Kushner, boggles the mind. I can't even think how a real, I can't even think how a hardcore thinks like, this is a great plan, sir. Yeah. And you know he thinks about it that way. You know he looks at it and he's like, well, there's a coastline there. We could put a casino and who wouldn't want to do that? Everyone would love a beach, very sunny, very Mediterranean. Yeah.

And I think, I don't know if this is going to have the same follow-on effect because that's a shocking idea. That's a shocking thing. But what happened in NATO this last week and what happened in Riyadh with Marco Rubio and Trump essentially switching sides in the war in Ukraine,

I think that's another area where foreign policy conservatives are going to have to really take a deep breath and go, is this what I want for this country's future? Do I really want America to be on the side of the Russian dictatorship? Maybe I'm just old-fashioned. I think that's still going to be an issue. Well, and I think a lot of them have to really come to grips with like –

What are we gaining? That's what I always ask. I was one of those deluded ones that thought that if he would just get beat in the primary or if he would lose in 2024, the party could maybe be –

I'm no longer in that camp. I mean, the Republican Party has chosen. And the point that I make to folks is like, what are you gaining by staying in that boat? If you believe in a strong America abroad, you believe in a strong defense, if you're Tom Cotton,

You know, because that guy, I mean, he'll say crazy things now to stay on the team. But like he's a he's a Reagan conservative when it comes to foreign policy. You know, same way like Dan Crenshaw and even Marco Rubio, who just completely has turned his spots. Lindsey Graham. And these guys, you know, they'll tell you they'll say behind the scenes like, oh, well, we just you know, this is how you got to stay on the team. And there will be ineffective completely if we're outside. They haven't been effective on anything since that guy came down the escalator.

Not a single principled Republican who has stated on the team has moved Trump a single inch towards them at one time. And I mean, you and I both know the threat of you'll get a primary if you cross Trump. You might. You might. Yeah, you might. And you've got to be ready to go to battle if you want to make any kind of a difference. And none of these guys have been ready to go to battle.

I mean, I guess one of the things that used to be like a defining characteristic, and I was fortunate because I grew up, you know, in that my first big assignments were with George H.W. Bush, where we would fire people if they were rude, where if you didn't manage your life, you got fired. If you weren't a good person, you got fired. And now it's like we've defined deviancy so far down that –

There's this expectation almost like these people are all scummy, all corrupt, all bad. And I feel like that is really like a disservice to the country. And I know that's one of the things about priorities first is you guys have emphasized in the principles like,

Our leaders should be people we can admire. Right. Our leaders should be people that we can trust. Our leaders should be people that we can say to our kids and grandkids, like, that's the kind of person you should act like. I mean, is that the most corrosive thing about Trump? It's just he's reduced all of them to liars and to sycophants. I think so. I mean, and the really corrosive thing you touched on it is –

Him reducing the expectations of the average American about what they should see in an American leader, what kind of what kind of personal life they should lead, the decisions that they make in their personal lives to be an upstanding individual. I mean, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, these are basic things. It's also a security risk. I mean, these guys have blackmail lists that would embarrass anybody. You couldn't even get that in a single book.

And that's a risk to the country. And at that point, I don't think has been made too much. And you would think it would come out in the advice and consent process. But unfortunately, you know, Senate Republicans have gotten that confused with trust and obey. I mean, they don't ask any questions. And God bless Mitch McConnell in his in his departing hour here has at least at least

told the country that the Republican Party got it wrong on most of these guys, but nobody else has listened to them. I guess you've got to be set to retire before you start voting the right way if you're in the Republican Party. It really seems to be like courage comes when you're headed out the door now, which I think is sad because courage is the highest virtue, as they say. And unfortunately, there's not a lot of it out there. We'll be right back. And now, back to the show.

So let me ask you a question, Heath. What do you want? What would you what would your great scenario be for the 2028 election as we go into the post-Trump era? I know they're casting it quite far in the future. And there's a lot of, you know, many a slip between the cup and the lip problems here. But what do you think that what do you think America needs to be to look like in our elections, in our politics, in in the next presidential race?

to get through what we're at right now, to get out of this hole we're in right now. Yeah. I mean, I, I would have, I would have hoped that we would have beat him at the ballot box the second time in November. Obviously it didn't go, go that way. I thought it was, I thought the stakes were supremely high for the country in November. I think they continued to be supremely high. Um, as we see week in and week out the incompetence, the just complete, uh,

abandonment of everything the country has represented. You know, I've learned to be humble with the prognostications about what should and might happen. But look, I think the country really needs to reject

Trumpism, not just Trump. Trumpism, this whole political thing, this zeitgeist of stuff that has built up around him that has laid claim to a popular majority, a popular electoral majority of Americans to send the signal to the rest of the world that we might actually now stand for these things. It has to be defeated. And, you know,

Kamala tried to assemble this coalition, uh, in November and, and didn't get it done, but the, the fight has cannot stop. The fight cannot stop and it has to keep going. It has to be keep going with new faces, new leaders. I think the democratic party, I think step one has to be a little bit of introspection and disruption to the democratic party. Uh, the leaders that have been there a long time, the, the crazy folks that made this, this, you know, the Gaza campus die ends a thing. Uh,

that, you know, all this talk about people's races and genders, that is not the key concerns. I mean, we ought to have equal respect, equal opportunity under the law. We ought to be treating everyone with dignity and respect. That's not ever been in question, although MAGA does, and we should point that out. They're not respecting everybody. But the point needs to be made that, like,

Hey, if we believe it, we do believe in merit based hiring and merit based practices. And if you believe in those things, you damn sure can't vote for Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host for the head of the Department of Defense. OK, so there's arguments there to be made. And what I hope is that somebody comes along.

to lay claim to this massive grassroots movement that I think is going to revolt against Donald Trump and JD and whoever's going to pick up that torch. Because I think I do, I really am concerned about the country over the next four years. I think there could be sort of a crisis, either foreign or economic that really just,

just kind of pulls back the curtain on the charade that this Trumpism is. And so you've got to have a grassroots army ready to fall in behind a leader who is going to disrupt the Democratic Party, build a broad electoral coalition that is going to send a loud signal in 2026 and 2028, a repudiation of this guy's ideas at the ballot box.

Sure, there's going to be legal battles. There's going to be court challenges to all this, you know, abuse of executive authority that Trump is trying to pull. That's great. There's a place for the legal battles in the court. He shouldn't be allowed to do anything that is illegal or unconstitutional. And those fights need to continue. But the real fight is going to be the next time that the Americans go into that ballot box to render a verdict on Trumpism. And that one, we can't give it a thumbs up again.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right, is that the movement itself is pernicious. It's not just Trump. Trump is pernicious, but the movement itself has become such a mutated, populist thing that

That, you know, and people always ask, are you progressive? No, I'm a conservative still. I'm a center-right conservative. And I believe that nationalism and populism lead countries to very bad, dark places. So I think what you're right in saying that we've got to defeat the movement as well as the man, because the movement is leading, I think, millions of Americans to conclude things that...

That that that other races and other religions are the cause of their problems. And I think that leads people into a very dark place that does very bad things very quickly. So and we need to take it seriously. I mean, we need to take those arguments for what they are, because they have convinced an electoral majority of Americans to support them.

And a lot of folks have been lied to. A lot of folks have been sold a bill of goods. A lot of folks have lost their fortunes. I mean, Steve Bannon just got pled guilty to bilking people out of all their money to build that he's going to build the wall. I mean, just straight up fraud. So a lot of these people have given their hard earned money.

To to Trumpism just to have it blown on a Steve Bannon yacht. So they've been it's just sad. It's unfortunate. But countries go through chapters like this and the United States is not immune. But this is not who we are. And I think most Americans will ultimately see that. And when they do, there needs to be a place to go.

And principles first, we'll be trying to be a small part of that. But it's going to take a, it's going to take a village for sure. Many, many hands, many hands. Well, Heath, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today, folks, check out principles first as,

As he said, it's sold out this year for the conference, but they do great work. They are out there really offering an alternative for conservatives and Republicans who know that even if they voted for Trump, they're not in the right place morally and politically and personally and philosophically.

Heath, tell folks where they can find you on social media. Sure. Thanks, Rick. We're on Twitter. We're on Blue Sky at Principles underscore 1ST. That's sort of our main social media. We're also on Facebook, so you can find us there. You can also find us online. Our website is PrinciplesFirst.us. Principles First just spelt out that way. You can find us there. But we'd encourage people to come to the summit if you can. Come to a regional dinner. Meet us. That's what it's about, building community and community.

You know, it's just, it's growing. We're out there and don't lose hope. You know, this is not a time to bend the knee. This is a time for people to start stiffening their spines and preparing because this is gonna be a long battle to take our country back from this mess. - Outstanding. Well, thank you again, Heath. We look forward to having you on soon and best of luck with the conference. And we'll talk to you another time. - All right, thanks Rick.

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