DNC Republicans

Reaching across party lines

I’m not watching the Democratic National Convention. I didn’t watch the Republican one either. I’m just not one to normally tune in for speech after speech when I can get the high points from podcasts and other media outlets. Sympathetic outlets will show the good stuff and opposition outlets will show the “OMG-he-said-what” stuff in their Outrage Du Jour sequences.

Still, for those who do choose to spend their evenings watching the DNC, Tuesday and Wednesday nights were probably pretty interesting. There are quite a few Republican speakers addressing the DNC this year. I guess the planners had to set the schedule carefully to make sure that their Republican guests didn’t rival the number of Democrats at the podium on any given night, although a Republican Night would have presented interesting publicity possibilities.

Richard Jacobs/Unsplash

On Tuesday, Politico reported that no less than four Republicans took the stage in Chicago to endorse Kamala Harris. The Tuesday night crowd wasn’t necessarily people that you would recognize. There was Mayor John Giles of Mesa, Arizona, Stephanie Grisham, communications director and press secretary for Donald Trump, Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist and commentator, and Kyle Sweetser, a construction worker and Republican voter.

The names got bigger on Wednesday. Former congressman Adam Kinzinger, a former lieutenant governor of Georgia, Geoff Duncan, and Olivia Troye, a national security specialist from the Trump Administration, were all scheduled to address the convention as I write this on Wednesday afternoon.

Having dissidents from the other party address political conventions isn’t totally new. I’m old enough to remember when my former governor, Zell Miller, addressed the 2004 Republican convention to warn against John Kerry. This was during another shift in the parties. Conservative Democrats like Miller had governed Georgia since circa about the Civil War if not earlier, but Republicans were still riding a cresting wave of Reagan conservatism.

As a bit of trivia, Miller was largely responsible for the removal of the Confederate battle emblem from Georgia’s state flag, an action that earned him the nickname “Zig Zag Zell.” I opposed the move at the time, but one of the areas where my opinion has shifted is in the need to remove the Confederate legacy from places of honor. I like history, but the bottom line is that the Confederates were people who were committing treason. Although many were good people by the standards of the day, their legacies are tainted by their traitorous actions, and the Confederate flag is irreversibly linked to racism.

In 2008, Joe Lieberman showed up at the RNC to warn against Barack Obama. Lieberman had been the vice presidential candidate on the ticket with Al Gore only eight years earlier. Like the current Republican Party, Lieberman’s Democratic Party shifted quite a bit in a short time.

One way you can tell which party is more radical and out of the mainstream is by which one’s senior members show up at the opposition conventions. It seems quaint now to think of John Kerry and Barack Obama as dangerously unfit to be president, but that was the case at the time.

It hasn’t just been Democrats crossing the aisle. In 2020, John Kasich, a former governor of Ohio and one of the finalists in the 2016 Republican primary, made the trip to the Democratic convention to warn against Donald Trump.

Even though featuring the opposition at a party convention isn’t unprecedented, the sheer number of Republicans willing to take the stage and endorse Not Trump is. These people are effectively ending their careers. The politicians will likely never be able to successfully run for office again and the aides and consultants will almost certainly be purged from Republican society.

And they won’t be hired by Democrats either. Like me, they may find common cause with the Democrats against Donald Trump and MAGA, but our ideological differences are too great on too many issues for us to call ourselves Democrats. To a lot of Republicans, however, the only issue that matters is Donald Trump.

Those who are political professionals with connections may write a book, find some slots on political talk shows, or if they are lucky, find a spot at a think tank. For the most part, these are poor substitutions for steady work and not what they would prefer to be doing.

My point is that being Never Trump is not good for business. With a few notable exceptions, the money for conservatives is in getting on the Trump Train. That’s one reason why so few Republicans are willing to stand up to Trump. Being principled doesn’t pay the bills. Telling MAGA voters, listeners, and readers what they want to hear does.

You might wonder why dissident Democrats and Republicans don’t just change parties. Some, like Arlen Specter, did. Zell Miller had a characteristically homespun answer to the question.

“I compare it to being in an old house,” Miller said. “It’s a house that I’ve lived in for years that’s getting kind of drafty and hard to heat. The plumbing won’t work, and some strangers have moved into the basement, and I don’t know who they are, and there’s no doubt I would be more comfortable in another house. But, you see, I was here first. I’ve lived in this house for years and years. It’s home, and I’m not going to leave.”

I think a lot of Never Trump Republicans can identify with that.

If the appearance of a platoon of Republicans at the DNC doesn’t impress you, look at the Republican convention. Not only were there no Democratic speakers, but former Republican presidents and First Ladies were conspicuous in their absence. That includes Melania Trump.

The absences also include a large part of Trump’s cabinet from his first (and probably only) term. Only slightly more than half of Trump’s old cabinet is supporting his re-election bid, and quite a few of those, such as Nikki Haley and Bill Barr, have said that Trump is unfit but are voting for him anyway. I didn’t make a count of how many of these people, like Mark Meadows, are under indictment and may be hoping for pardons or dropped charges if The Former Guy becomes The Future Guy, but it’s a nonzero number. The 57 percent who are backing Trump, many with reservations, don’t represent a slam dunk for the candidate.

Per the Washington Post rundown of 42 former cabinet members, three have openly expressed opposition to Trump’s re-election and the silence is deafening from another 15. The three who have said that they will not support Trump are Mike Pence, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

Many of the silent 15 have been openly critical of Trump. Among these are former conservative darlings such as John Kelly, James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, Betsy DeVos, and Elaine Chao, the former Secretary of Transportation who is married to Mitch McConnell.

Who is showing up to the Democratic convention to warn voters not to trust Trump for another four years says a lot, but in the end, who didn’t show up at the Republican convention and who isn’t backing Trump’s re-election may be more telling. A large share of the people who worked alongside Donald Trump have either said he is unfit or are refusing to endorse his campaign. His wife is not campaigning for him.

I’ve written before that when MAGA tells us who they are, we should believe them. We should also believe Trump’s closest associates when they tell voters to run away from a second Trump presidency.

As my former lieutenant governor said last night, “These days our party acts more like a cult, a cult worshipping a felonous thug ... let me be clear to my Republican friends at home: If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 you're not a Democrat, you're a patriot.”

RFKJR RUMORED TO ENDORSE TRUMP The maverick Democratic conspiracy theorist in the third-party campaign is rumored to be about to drop out and endorse Trump. RFKJR seemed to appeal more to people who liked Trump, so his exit may not have much effect on the race.

Standby for a possible incoming bye-ku.