Heath Mayo has a message for serious conservatives: It’s time to ditch CPAC and head on over to the Principles First Summit.

Mr. Mayo, who used to be a regular at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, says what once was a place for defense, economic and social conservatives to meet and debate has turned into a Trump-tastic circus devoid of intellectual heft.

“The panels were about how to combat inflation and you’d have economic scholars talking about the Fed setting the interest rate, what the role of Congress was in influencing inflation,” Mr. Mayo said. “Now, you know, it is Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, the J6 choir. They are rolling golden statues of Trump through the hallway. This is not a place where people are discussing policy.”

His answer is the summit, now in its fourth year, which gives Trump apostates a home.

Where CPAC will feature some of former President Donald Trump‘s most ardent supporters — including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell and Kari Lake, a television news anchor turned GOP candidate — the Principles First Summit counters with former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of two Republicans to serve on the House select committee that investigated the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Bill Kristol will participate on a panel focused on “America’s Tradition of Classical Liberalism,” and former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will speak about “Justice and the Rule of Law.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, whose bid for the GOP presidential nomination never got traction against Mr. Trump, will weigh in on the “Lessons from Ronald Reagan.” Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows and a star witness for the J6 committee, is taking part in a discussion on “Leading with Principle: Speaking up for the Truth.”

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Maricopa County, Arizona, Recorder Stephen Richer — a pair of Republicans who endured fierce backlash for refusing to go along with Mr. Trump‘s rigged election allegations — are headlining a panel on “Defending our Elections: The Practice of Democracy.”

Mr. Mayo said the dueling conferences in Washington on the same weekend highlight the tug of war within the Republican Party. More importantly, he said, it illustrates the division among conservatives over the direction of a movement that he believes has been hijacked by Mr. Trump and a populist MAGA movement that put American exceptionalism on the back burner.

Mr. Mayo blames CPAC’s current incarnation on Matt Schlapp, head of the American Conservative Union, which produces the annual gathering, now held at a sprawling convention center in National Harbor, Maryland, where general admission tickets are $295 a pop.

He says Mr. Schlapp has drained CPAC of ideas and replaced it with personalities who might be ripped from reality TV.

“It’s a constant search to play the victim with respect to something,” he said. “I think conservatives need to give a good hard look at what Matt Schlapp has done to both CPAC and the American Conservative Union.”

Asked about the criticism, Mr. Schlapp said The Washington Times should be more focused on the “spectacular” CPAC program. The Times is also covering CPAC.

Whatever the criticisms, Mr. Schlapp has been successful.

CPAC now runs satellite conventions in Hungary and Japan.

At the big event this week outside Washington, CPAC is drawing thousands of attendees.

The Principles First gathering, meanwhile, has doubled in size from a year ago — to 700 tickets sold, at $45 a pop.

Mr. Mayo is aware his brand of conservatism is not a controlling faction within the Republican Party. But he said the party needs them.

“If you want to be president of the United States, I don’t think you can get there without winning principles first voters,” he said. “These folks are not going to just pull the lever for their party.”

Asked if he thinks they’ll desert the GOP in a Trump-Biden matchup, he said Mr. Trump has “a lot of work to do.”

He said summit attendees are concerned about a growing isolationist streak within the Republican Party and want to see a more forceful response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Republican Party, we used to be like all about American exceptionalism, we’re the best country in the world, and now we’re sort of like, yeah, we’re sort of like Putin, we are no better than Russia,” Mr. Mayo said.

He was particularly irked by Mr. Trump‘s comparison of his own legal troubles to the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

“It puts in stark relief just the outrageousness of what he has sort of done,” he said of Mr. Trump. “I mean, how has he generated this much self-loathing within the conservative movement?”

“This is ridiculous,” he said.

• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.