Pro-Democracy Republicans Step Up for Harris - Rob Horowitz
Rób Horowitz, MINDSETTER™
Pro-Democracy Republicans Step Up for Harris - Rob Horowitz
The informal leader of this effort is Liz Cheney, the former House Republican Conference chair, who sacrificed her promising political career to oppose the former President in the wake of January 6. Last week, the former Wyoming congresswoman told the crowd in Ripon, Wisconsin--the location of the founding of the Republican party in 1854-- that she has “never voted for a Democrat. But this year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” She exclaimed, “We have a shared commitment, a shared commitment as Americans to ensuring that future generations live in a nation where power is transferred peacefully, where our leaders are men and women of good faith, and where our public servants set aside partisan battles to do what’s right for this country.”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
At the same joint appearance with the vice president, Ms. Cheney made a special appeal to conservatives to reject Donald Trump. “What January 6th shows us is that there is not an ounce, not an ounce of compassion in Donald Trump,” she said. “He is petty, he is vindictive, and he is cruel. And Donald Trump is not fit to lead this good and great nation.”
Joining Liz Cheney in backing Harris and opposing Donald Trump are 111 former Republican members of Congress and national security officials from Republican administrations. Asserting that Donald Trump is “unfit to serve again as president,” the former Republican elected and appointed officials echoed Ms. Cheney’s major points. “We firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump, the former Republican officials wrote, “As President, he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country's founding documents. In our view, by inciting the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and defending those who committed it, he has violated his oath of office and brought danger to our country. As former Vice President Pence has said, "Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”
As The New York Times reported, these endorsers included some “former Republican House members, like Charles W. Boustany Jr. of Louisiana, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Dan Miller of Florida and Bill Paxon of New York,” who did not publicly oppose Trump in 2020. In a separate announcement, Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general and as White House counsel for President George W. Bush, endorsed Ms. Harris.
Perhaps the most surprising Republican endorsement of Kamala Harris so far is Liz Cheney’s stoutly conservative father, Dick Cheney, who not only declared his opposition to the former president but explicitly endorsed the vice president. “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump, said the former vice president, secretary of defense, and congressman. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.”
Taken together, these endorsements create a permission structure to vote for Harris for the sub-set of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who don’t like Donald Trump and remain troubled by his unprecedented, reckless, and lawless effort to discard the votes of 81 million Americans that culminated with his dereliction of duty on January 6. They enhance the protection of democracy argument by giving it a bipartisan frame. Despite its blithe dismissal by some pundits and the downplaying of it by Republican strategists, an examination of 2022 exit polls confirms that concerns about democracy were a major reason Democrats overperformed.
Donald Trump’s continuing to insist he won the 2020 election against all the evidence, along with his repeated refrains of the only way he will lose in 2024 is if the election is rigged, are keeping the threat another term poses to our democracy fresh in people’s minds.
The high stakes for our democracy in this election are now back front and center once again in the public conversation due to two recent developments. The signature moment of last week’s vice-presidential debate, which was otherwise won by JD Vance, was the Ohio senator’s refusal to say Trump lost the 2020 election when asked directly by Tim Walz. The answer went together with Vance previously saying that unlike Mike Pence, he would have refused to certify the election and sent it back to the states—a blatantly unconstitutional action. Additionally, Jack Smith’s superseding indictment in the criminal case against Donald Trump for his actions in the wake of his 2020 election defeat was unsealed by Judge Chutkan. Jack Smith updated the indictment to conform with the Supreme Court decision in the case, spelling out a degree of presidential immunity for official acts. The new tidbits in the document about Mr. Trump’s callousness towards his vice president, as well as the knowledge that Mr. Trump knew he lost but was going to cling to power by any means possible anyway, generated extensive media coverage.
By putting country over party, these pro-democracy Republicans will help ensure that for an important slice of voters who are still up for grabs, the importance of protecting our democracy will be a key factor in their voting decisions. That is good news for Kamala Harris and bad news for Donald Trump.