Disillusioned GOP voters want conservatism to be great again

Many American conservatives are feeling lost in the political wilderness of late.

While President Donald Trump hasn’t quite captured the heart of the American people, his takeover of the Republican Party has been a roaring success. As of January, according to Gallup, 87 percent of Republicans approve of his performance as president—compared to just 8 percent of Democrats. That’s in part because a number of conservatives no longer recognize the GOP, and have started identifying as independent rather than Republican.

Democrats, by and large, don’t have much sympathy for their plight. But those of us who live in Texas have probably met conservatives like Heath Mayo, and can understand where he’s coming from.

We can also get a sense of where the GOP is going, perhaps, by considering Mayo’s experiences over the course of the month.

A few weeks ago Mayo, 28, of East Texas, ruffled feathers in the nation’s capital by suggesting on Twitter that conservatives should meet up this weekend to discuss their principles over drinks.

That’s not a particularly seditious suggestion in itself. But Mayo proposed these gatherings as an alternative to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which will be held this weekend in National Harbor, Md., on the banks of the Potomac River just south of Washington, D.C.

“Instead of CPAC this year, principled conservatives should huddle at a different hotel during the same days (Mar 1-2) to stand up & reject CPAC’s steady abandonment of our principles,” Mayo tweeted on Feb. 12.

“Or just grab some drinks and apps somewhere while we air grievances,” he added. “How many of us are left?”

It was clear from this message that Mayo is not an obedient Republican, nor personally loyal to Trump.

And it was clear from the response that Mayo is not the only conservative feeling underwhelmed by Trump’s performance as president or by his influence on the conservative movement.

His suggestion was retweeted by a number of Trump-skeptical conservatives in the media, and many of their followers applauded the idea. By Monday, #PrinciplesFirst gatherings had been scheduled in about a dozen cities, including Houston, Austin and Dallas. About 1,000 people had RSVPed for them.

And Mayo had received a fair amount of pushback from Trump loyalists; that, too, was predictable enough.

“Who is this guy @HeathMayo?” tweeted Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a loyal supporter of Trump who briefly worked in the White House, a few days after Mayo made his off-the-cuff proposal.

“Man, he’s monomaniacal and pathetic at the same time,” Gorka sneered.

“Grab a Zima and commiserate about grifters, cultists, tribalism, muh (sic) principles and take bets on who beats Trump in a primary — Flake, Kasich or Weld,” scoffed Julie Kelly, a senior contributor for American Greatness , an online publication supportive of Trump.

When I called Mayo this week, he agreed that such reactions are a bit overwrought.

“I’m just a normal person who works a job in Boston, and I tweeted one thing out,” Mayo said.

In fairness, Mayo is a graduate of Brown University and Yale Law School who works for one of the world’s top management consulting firms. He was on a business trip to Lisbon, Portugal, when we spoke.

But Mayo is a normal person, albeit a high-achieving one. And he’s clearly a conservative whose commitment to his principles predates Trump’s campaign for president. He grew up in the town of Whitehouse, south of Tyler, and identified as a Republican when he infiltrated the Ivy League via a baseball scholarship.

In fact, Mayo was still an undergraduate the first time he attended CPAC, which began in 1974, with a lineup that included speakers such as Ronald Reagan.

He told me he had seen CPAC as an institution devoted to a purely intellectual version of conservatism, separate from the Republican Party, where Americans on the right could go for serious discussions of principles and policy.

But things have changed in recent years.

“It’s just sickening to me, what it’s become,” Mayo said.

And to his point, CPAC has changed since the last time he attended the conference four years ago. In 2015, Republicans were expecting a vigorously contested presidential primary that year, and CPAC’s featured speakers included serious contenders like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. Right-wing media personalities such as Fox News host Laura In-graham and, well, Trump, were also there.

This year, CPAC’s lineup leans more heavily on the latter. Trump will speak, of course, as will Gorka, and social media personalities such as Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens.

For conservatives like Mayo, that kind of change isn’t auspicious.

“There’s always been that element of the Republican Party, the sort of ... wild hairs,” Mayo said. “But now it sort of feels like that has become the main event — the spectacle of hot rhetoric and invective.”

The cost of attending CPAC has gone up, to boot; that also bothered him.

“It’s 300 bucks to go talk about conservatism,” Mayo said.

That’s hardly an unreasonable concern for a conservative from East Texas to raise. And Republicans should be heartened that a young conservative like Mayo is trying to keep their principles alive by bringing Americans together, rather than pinning his hopes on the judiciary—or simply giving up, and succumbing to the siren calls of the left. erica.grieder@chron.com