Some of President Trump’s most vocal Republican critics are divided over the future of a party that has pushed them to the margins, reflecting a fractured movement still trying to find its footing a decade after Mr. Trump rose to power.
Their differing views about what should come after the Trump administration were evident as they gathered at a summit near Washington that has become an annual stop for figures in what is known as the “Never Trump” movement.
Mr. Trump’s 2024 election win reinforced his grip on the G.O.P. and left many of his critics inside the party without a natural political domain. Now, members of this splintering faction are contemplating their route back to relevance once Trump leaves office. There is much they disagree on, interviews show, including who would make an appealing presidential candidate in 2028.
Does the most promising path involve, as some believe, expanding a foothold in a Democratic Party strongly opposed to Mr. Trump? Is it simply a matter, as others maintain, of waiting — hoping, perhaps — for Republicans to move on from the president and his MAGA movement once he leaves office?
Is it all hopeless?
“I’m not sure what I’m fighting for at this point,” said John Giles, the Republican former mayor of Mesa, Ariz., who opposed Mr. Trump in each of the last three presidential elections and spoke in support of Kamala Harris at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. “I don’t see any kind of pushback in the Republican Party right now.”
He is one of a number anti-Trump Republicans who attended the Principles First summit, which concludes on Sunday at a convention center along the Potomac River in Maryland. In some ways, it has become an answer by anti-Trump Republicans to pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference gatherings.
The event has included an eclectic lineup, including former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who said he was open to supporting a Democrat in 2028, and former Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina, who said he was “not ready to go there.” (Centrist Democrats also made the guest list, including Conor Lamb, the former Pennsylvania congressman.)
Some anti-Trump Republicans voiced hope that they would draw more support to their cause after the midterm elections, which they suggested would embolden Republicans who bristle at the president but keep their concerns private.
That calculus left them rooting against their own party.
Mr. Giles said he wanted Democrats to secure a check on a president who he argued had “alienated friends across the globe and been cruel to people here.”
And former Representative Barbara Comstock, a Republican from Virginia who lost her seat in 2018, said she wanted Republicans to lose “badly” in this year’s midterms. A drubbing is necessary so that the MAGA movement “burns itself out,” she argued, creating oxygen for other voices in the party.
Ms. Comstock said she had no interest in leaving the party, but described its current iteration as “narrow, racist, very insular.” And she ridiculed potential successors to Mr. Trump, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, saying, “People who are bowing and scraping to Trump don’t appeal to me.”
Mr. Christie, who by turns criticized and supported Mr. Trump over the years but broke with the president over his 2020 election denialism and ran against him in 2024, dismissed Mr. Rubio, too, saying in an onstage appearance that Mr. Rubio was among a group of Republicans who care “more about their title” than “their character.”
Mr. Christie said he was open to supporting either party in 2028, calling the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, “incredibly smart,” “tough” and a “reasonable guy.”
But Mr. Rubio, unlike Mr. Vance, still appeared to appeal to some in the anti-Trump crowd. Mr. McCrory, the former North Carolina governor who campaigned for Mr. Trump in 2016 but declined to back him in 2024, said he was drawn to Mr. Rubio.
“Whether I agree with him or not on all the issues, to me he shows incredible maturity and expertise and good communication skills,” Mr. McCrory said. For now, he added, he felt he did not have a “political home.”
Former Senator Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who supported Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 and Ms. Harris in 2024, likewise described Mr. Rubio as a promising option, approvingly calling him a “traditional” conservative.
“I just don’t think what we’re seeing now is conservative policy,” added Mr. Flake, who did not attend the Principles First summit but said he would like to in future years.
A White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, mocked the convention, saying in a statement that it amounted to a “bunch of Trump deranged has-been politicians.” A Republican National Committee spokeswoman, Kiersten Pels, said in a statement that the convention had “no credibility and nothing to offer voters.”
It is far from clear that anti-Trump Republicans could wield much power within the party even after the president leaves office. In a possible sign of their dwindling influence, some have joined the Democrats in recent months.
Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party congressman from Illinois, became a Democrat in June. (He called his new party “elitist” and “out of touch,” but rued that the “Never Trump” faction within the G.O.P. had lacked any “unity.”)
George T. Conway III, a longtime conservative critic of Trump, recently moved to New York, joined the Democratic Party and in January began a run for Congress.
And Geoff Duncan, who was the Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia when Mr. Trump sought to overturn his 2020 election defeat there, announced in August that he was switching parties. Now, he is running for governor as a Democrat.
“It is obvious that there’s no room for us,” said Olivia Troye, an adviser to Mike Pence during Mr. Trump’s first term, who did not attend the summit. She said she was channeling her energy toward electing Democrats.
Still, Michael Steele, the former Republican National Committee chairman and a self-described “Lincoln Republican,” said he would “stay in the fight” against MAGA Republicans, no matter how lonely it gets.
“People ask me, ‘Why are you still a Republican?’” said Mr. Steele, who joined the party a half-century ago. “Because I was here first.”
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