It’s a dynamic that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago: The GOP’s most recent president and presidential nominee that came before the party’s current pick won’t publicly back him.
So tenacious conservative Dick Cheney and progressive icon Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are voting for the same presidential candidate.
You don’t see that every election.
Former President Donald Trump’s bid to regain power is generating all kinds of odd situations, including stalwart opposition from party leaders and members of the Republican political establishment such as Cheney, former Rep. Liz Cheney and 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The Cheneys have gone so far as to say they will vote for Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Speaking of dynasties, former President George W. Bush does not plan to endorse his party’s standard bearer this year, and he won’t say how he or former first lady Laura Bush will vote in November, a spokesperson confirmed over the weekend.
It’s a dynamic that would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago: The GOP’s most recent president and presidential nominee who came before the party’s current pick won’t publicly back him.
Americans never would have expected Romney not to receive Bush’s support in 2012 − or the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., not to get Bush’s backing in 2008. Former President Bill Clinton supported then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, even after he defeated former first lady Hillary Clinton in that year’s Democratic primary.
Many of these prominent Republicans who have split with Trump have made themselves clear: It’s both policy and personality differences that are fueling this fissure in the Republican Party. And those are differences that could decide the presidential race between Trump and Harris.
„What’s happened to the Republican Party today, you know, is indefensible“, Liz Cheney said Sunday on ABC’s „This Week.“ „And I hope to be able to rebuild . after this cycle.“
Trump and allies say the party has already been rebuilt via the MAGA movement, and the vast majority of Republican voters remain with them while the critics are „Republicans in Name Only.“
„Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter“, Trump said in a weekend Truth Social post.
In the meantime, the political world is trying to get used to the idea that the Cheneys – among the most conservative political figures of the last half-century – are backing Harris, a product of liberal California. Some cited Bill Murray’s character in the 1984 film Ghostbusters: „Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!“Policy and personality
Some of the Republicans who have balked at Trump’s rise over the last 8 years genuinely disagree with him on the issues facing the nation, including items that were party dogma for decades. Amid Trump’s gradual GOP takeover, starting with his 2016 election, the Republican Party has become more interventionist in the economy and more isolationist in foreign policy.
Trump built his 2016 campaign in part by attacking the kinds of Republicans who are attacking him now, the party’s more traditional prior leaders.
