Donald Trump has generated antibodies in his own party. Last month’s convention in Milwaukee showed an apparent closing of ranks that hid the fact that important figures of the Republican Party were left out of the unity. Neither George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, nor Mike Pence participated. The Democrats took advantage of their own convention to give voice to some Republicans who support Kamala Harris. They are not alone. They have been joined by lawyers who worked for the last Republican presidents and more than 200 former employees and officials of traditional Republican leaders, who see Trump as a populist who poses a threat to democracy. Since the support of the adversary grants an extra legitimacy, Trump has also made an effort to sign renegade Democrats, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
While the defections are isolated in the Democratic Party, they are much more widespread in Trump’s party and reflect a break with the traditional conservatism of the Grand Old Party (GOP), as the Republican Party is also known. Since he descended the golden stairs of his Fifth Avenue tower to announce his candidacy in 2015, Trump turned the party upside down. He won the primaries against figures such as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, resorting to nicknames and personal insults. Although some wounds have healed – Rubio aspired to be a vice-presidential candidate – others remain open. The confrontation extended to previous Republican candidates such as John McCain and Mitt Romney. His presidency proved divisive not only for the country, but also within his party.
“The Grand Old Party has been hijacked by extremists and turned into a cult,” said John Giles, mayor of Mesa (Arizona’s third-largest city) and a great admirer of the late John McCain, a senator from his state and Republican presidential candidate in 2008, at the Democratic convention last week. The journalist Ana Navarro compared Trump to Latin American dictators Daniel Ortega, Fidel and Raúl Castro and Nicolás Maduro, for attacking the free press and refusing to admit defeat at the polls.
Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary, said she became disillusioned after being a “true believer” who shared Christmas and Thanksgiving with the Trump family at Mar-a-Lago, the then-president’s mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. “He has no empathy, no morals, no fidelity to the truth. He used to tell me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, say it enough and people will believe you. ’ But it does matter: what you say matters, and what you don’t say matters, too.”
“I never thought I would be here,” said former Congressman Adam Kinzinger at the start of what was perhaps the most forceful intervention against the Republican leader, with whom he broke with following the assault on the Capitol. “Donald Trump is a weak man who pretends to be strong. He is a small man who pretends to be big. He is a man without faith who pretends to be righteous. He is a victimizer who cannot stop playing the victim,” he proclaimed. “We must put our country first. […] Democracy knows no parties. It is a living ideal that defines us as a nation. It is the cornerstone that separates us from tyranny,” he concluded.
Kinzinger said he became a Republican as a child because of his admiration for Ronald Reagan. Some of the lawyers and jurists who worked in the White House with Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and who disown Trump date back to that president, whom Republicans revere and about whom a film starring Dennis Quaid is being released this week. “We endorse Kamala Harris and support her election as president because we believe that returning former President Trump to office would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country,” the dozen signatories write in a letter revealed by the conservative network Fox News.
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The same statement goes on to point out that Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, and multiple members of his administration and White House staff at the highest levels, as well as former Republican candidates for president and vice president, have already refused to support his re-election. Among the signatories is former judge Michael Luttig, a prominent Reagan and Bush adviser who was often mentioned as a candidate for Supreme Court justice, and who has said he will vote Democrat for the first time.
“Trump’s attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after losing the election demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt his willingness to put his personal interests above the law and the values of our constitutional democracy,” the lawyers for the Reagan and Bush administrations added. “We cannot agree with other former Republican officials who have condemned Trump with these devastating judgments, but who are still unwilling to vote for Harris. We believe this election presents a binary choice, and Trump is totally disqualified,” they said.
Authoritarian drift and populist impulse
Before the 2020 elections, after a mandate that showed the damage that Trump was capable of doing to institutions with his authoritarian drift and his populist impulse, numerous Republicans mobilized and created the so-called Lincoln Project, with which they tried to stop Trumpism by preventing the then president from being reelected. This initiative remains active for this campaign.
Some of the Lincoln Project members are among the more than 200 Republicans who worked for Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush or Senators Mitt Romney and John McCain have also endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in a harsh open letter to Trump that she first released USA Today.
“Of course, we have many honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris,” they write. “That is to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable. At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership (…) will harm real, everyday people and weaken our hallowed institutions. Abroad, democratic movements will be irrevocably threatened as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin and turn their backs on our allies. We cannot allow that,” they write.
Rebecca Cook (REUTERS)
Trump is trying to counter the Republican wave by recruiting former Democrats. He has offered the two most prominent ones to be on his transition team if he wins the election. One is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who left the Democratic Party last year when he saw that he was going to fail in the primaries against Joe Biden and ran for president as an independent, but with little and dwindling support. The anti-vaccine politician and spreader of hoaxes threw in the towel last week to support Trump and attack his former party. The Republican leader welcomed him with open arms months after calling him a “radical left-wing lunatic.”
The other signing, which had been in the works for a long time, was served up on Monday: Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who tried—with no success—to run in the 2020 presidential primaries, then renounced her party and became a guest star on ultra-conservative forums to play her role as a convert, with which she came to sound like vice presidential candidateTrump has been preparing with her for the September 10 debate against Kamala Harris, because he faced off with the Democratic candidate in 2019 and managed to unsettle her.
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