Principled Patriots or Useful Idiots?

Every campaign I've worked on over 40 years included "Democrats for (my GOP candidate)." It's a tactic as old as politics. Are "Republicans for Harris" icons of courage?

Ever since the White House palace coup six weeks ago, we’ve seen a steady drumbeat of media coverage of self-proclaimed Republican “celebrities,” including former GOP House members and scores of presidential campaign staff joining “Republicans for Harris.” The latest was former Vice President Richard B. Cheney and his daughter, former US Rep. Liz Cheney.

It’s kinda weird since every campaign I’ve worked on and remember since the 1960s had a Democrats-or-Republicans-for-the-other-team effort. I’ve assembled a few over the 37 campaigns I’ve been involved with in 26 states over 40 years. Why all the attention now?

Neither was a surprise since both have made their opposition to all things Donald Trump well-known for most of the past decade. But hundreds of purportedly Republican officials and campaign operatives - all former - have joined the Harris-Walz campaign-created “Republicans for Harris” group.

But they’re hardly alone. Perhaps even more numerous are the self-identified Republicans who refused to vote for Donald Trump. The GOP nominee for the US Senate in Maryland, former Governor Larry Hogan, best personifies them, along with retiring US Senator and ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R-UT) , the 2012 GOP presidential nominee. But neither has endorsed Harris. Hogan is either tied or ahead in the open-seat race to replace Democratic Senator Ben Cardin in the heavily Democratic state. I’m cheering for Hogan to win.

Former Gov. and GOP Senate nominee Larry Hogan (R-MD)

Others have endorsed Harris, including David French, a self-proclaimed conservative pro-life attorney and former National Review writer who is now a New York Times columnist.

Several former House members, including US Reps. Tom Coleman (R-MO, one-term wonder John LeBoutllier (R-NY, and author of “Harvard Hates America”), and Dave Emery (R-ME) have been absent from politics for a decade or two or more and have suddenly emerged as Harris supporters. Many other ex-GOP House Members who remained in Washington as lobbyists have joined them. The Harris-Walz campaign has hired ex-US Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s (R-IL) former chief of staff, Andy Weatherford, to lead the effort. Kinzinger, of course, is best known for his being reapportioned out of his seat by Illinois Democrats after serving two years as a Democratic appointee on a Special House Committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Some people never learn.

Kinzinger and Liz Cheney were unprecedentedly appointed to the Committee by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after she rejected the then-GOP leader’s traditional role in choosing the representatives from their own party, thus undermining it. The committee’s work ended unceremoniously after the 2022 elections after it tried to delete records and famously refused to release thousands of hours of video footage from that fateful and tragic event. We’ve learned more since about the failures of the Capitol Police, the congressional Sergeants at Arms, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi than from the committee’s blatant partisanship.

Also, others now enjoying their 15 minutes of fame include 238 former GOP congressional and presidential staff—including low-level campaign workers, interns, and “legislative correspondents,” mainly from the Romney and John McCain campaigns and the George W. Bush Administration. Bush is the only other Republican who has won the White House in the last 32 years besides Donald Trump. For all my time working in GOP circles over four decades, I only recognize a few names, primarily former McCain Senate staff members both in Arizona and Washington, DC, that I knew during my time working in the Arizona congressional delegation more than thirty years ago.

They all have two things in common, aside from claiming to be Republicans and conservatives, loosely defined: 1) Most were on the public payroll in Washington, DC, with ties and affinities to the GOP beltway establishment, and 2) they all hate Donald Trump and/or fundamental changes he’s brought to the GOP. They don’t like outsiders who disrupt the stays quo on which their business models are established. A few disgruntled ex-Trump staff can also be found on the list. I do not doubt the list will grow as others look for their brief moments in the sun, or fear the goring of their favorite oxen in a future Trump Administration.

I’ll add a third thing: none of them I’ve seen has postulated a single reason to vote for Kamala Harris; just to vote against Trump. The strategy is obvious: to show persuadable Republicans and independent-minded voters that supporting Kamala Harris is okay and remind everyone what they’ve never liked about Trump.

Will it work?

Despite the solid amount of media coverage the gambit is receiving, it is more likely to backfire than succeed. There is zero news or political value in the highly unpopular Cheneys’ endorsement (Liz was soundly defeated for reelection in the GOP primary for the US House from Wyoming in 2022 by now-Rep. Harriet Hageman), both of whom have long expressed their disgust with Trump. As for Vice President Cheney, a CNN poll just before he left office in late 2008 found that 23 percent of Americans declared him the worst vice president ever, compared to 1 percent who found him the best. And trotting out long-forgotten congressmen-turned-lobbyists and a few others is not persuasive to families struggling to pay their grocery bills and reading about illegal immigrants committing crimes where they live.

It’s hard to see undecided voters (both of them) and certainly not Democrats being swayed by exhortations from the angry Cheneys.

Besides, if an assassination attempt and palace coup did little more than temporarily change the election dynamics, endorsements from mostly unknown ex-GOP officials and Capitol Hill ex-staff aren’t going to, either.

I know Republicans who, for personal reasons, can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump. Most remain friends (I hope), and I respect them. And I get why some of my friends in the Bush, McCain, and Romney worlds dislike Trump. After all, he’s said harsh and regrettable things against all three, especially McCain. The Bush people were mostly mad over Trump 2016 when “it was Jeb’s turn,” as one told me on Inauguration Day in 2017. Jeb Bush’s chief strategist and media maven, Mike Murphy, is now one of those “Republicans for Harris.” I’ve criticized Trump in this blog and probably will again, but why the Bush family felt it deserved a royal dynasty escapes me, despite working in Bush 41’s Administration.

Some of Trump’s policy pronouncements are troubling, and I’ve outlined a few. At least he has them.

But I was struck by the disjointed and bizarre New York Times op-ed by one of their token “conservative” columnists, French, where he went to great pains to describe his firmly held pro-life position, then announced that he was voting for the most pro-abortion candidate in American history. Yeah, that’s really standing on principle.

As a friend on Facebook opined, “It's like Protestants making an alliance with the Devil because they disagree with the Catholic Church.” It reeks of hypocrisy. It makes more sense to write in or vote for someone else on the ballot (and you will likely have several choices) than to vote for someone opposed to everything you stand for. Even as you throw away your vote on an inconsequential candidate, you can at least virtue signal that you denied Trump a vote. Yay.

Another reason these Republicans oppose Trump is they do not wish to associate with the deplorables bitter clingers people he’s brought into the GOP and the “Trumpism” that it represents, and they want to bring back the old GOP, or at least reshape the party. Many carry grudges from the past and offenses against people they worked for and from associations and social networks they still cling to. Others, especially in the lobbying community where I toiled for two decades, do not want to see their business models upended, which is exactly what Trump promises threatens to do.

Maybe I’d feel differently if I were still “in the game” as a Washington lobbyist, but I doubt it. I enjoyed working with the Trump White House with a unique business model of my own that proved very successful. Others should try it.

Yours truly with President Trump at my company’s table during his first American Manufacturing Summit at the White House, August 2017. I also had no problem working with Democrats.

I’m a product of that “old GOP,” but things are different now and bigger things are at stake. We have witnessed the long march of progressivism and intersectionality through our institutions, including the horrific politicization of our judicial system, the wholesale degradation of public education, and the horrific economic effects of massive spending policies that have increased the money supply and driven prices up 20 percent or more over the past three years. This insidious and destructive progressive mindset has infected plenty of corporate cultures, as we’ve all discovered and I can personally attest to. And never mind what the medical community is doing to young children confused about their gender, the biggest scandal of the 21st Century.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has added a new wrinkle just as Congress is about to write a new five year “farm bill” that enshrines Depression-era thinking about government sudsidies for corn, wheat, soybeans, and cotton. His cry to “make America healthy again” is forging new coalitions before our eyes after 50 years of government failure in dispensing nutrition policy. There, I said it. Kennedy’s agenda is getting more traction now that he’s with Trump than when he ran for president on his own.

Like him or not, Trump stands athwart history, yelling “Stop!”

You may know of people or events near where you live of illegal immigrants who have committed terrific crimes against innocent people, as US Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has expertly documented. Human and illicit drug trafficking, thanks to our open southern border, are at all-time highs. We’re facing the most significant tax increase in American history as early as next year. And don’t get me started on national security concerns, especially the projection of weakness abroad, weakness that invites aggression and worse.

Navy Captain Hung Cao (ret.) is both a neighbor of mine and the GOP US Senate nominee in Virginia against 18-year incumbent Tim Kaine.

We now know that Joe Biden’s 2020 election was predicated on several lies, including his son’s laptop having all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign and the infamous Russia collusion hoax perpetrated by the Hillary Clinton campaign and her lawyer, the infamous and court-sanctioned Marc Elias, in concert with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The “Twitter files” confirmed that Government agencies conspired with social and legacy media to censor voices from the Covid-19 pandemic. And those same miscreants are back at it again.

Elias is back at it again, fighting to loosen election integrity laws across America.

Oh, sure, there are Democrats (at least former ones) who have also endorsed Trump, including Kennedy and former US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI). However, their endorsements ring very differently than the ones of the anti-Trump Republicans. Especially Kennedy’s. These Trump endorsements may prove more powerful than a legion of GOP defecting Harris parrots. Besides, its in the Democratic playbook to divide Republicans; some are happy to comply, obviously, to remain acceptable within their beltway social circles.

All those and more are on the ballot in November. We’re going to find out whether voters favor endorsements over records and policies. “Republicans for Harris” do us no favors by prioritizing personal pique and preening over policies and national interest, and worse. They more resemble self-centered and self-dealing useful idiots than the principled patriots they purport to be.