Who are these Republicans who support Kamala Harris? Since the withdrawal of outgoing President Joe Biden, more and more Republican Party leaders have been calling for a vote for the Vice President of the United States. Some even spoke on Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the candidate was officially nominated for the White House race. These calls to vote for Kamala Harris are above all evidence of the fracture in the “Grand Old Party” around Donald Trump’s candidacy.
“Our party has become more like a cult these days, a cult that worships a criminal thug,” Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, where Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election, told a crowd of Democratic supporters Wednesday. “Voting for Kamala Harris in 2024 doesn’t make you a Democrat; it makes you a patriot,” he said, saying he was speaking to the millions of Republicans and independent voters “tired of having to make excuses” for Donald Trump.
The “Never Trump” take center stage
The Democratic convention offers an unusual platform for these Republicans who have opposed the former American president for years. Hostile to his increasingly controversial positions, some even voted for Joe Biden in 2020. But the conservative billionaire, convicted of criminal charges – a first for a former president and candidate – and twice subjected to impeachment proceedings, has above all lost many supporters since the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
His incitement not to recognize the results of the election that gave him the loss to Joe Biden, and then to march to the Capitol, had triggered a wave of resignations from several close to the Trumpist movement. Since then, the “Never Trump” movement, a more moderate branch of the conservative party, has contested the stranglehold of the “MAGA” movement (“Make America Great Again”) on the party with the elephant, “traitors to the cause” for the former president.
The “Republicans for Harris” are growing in number
Former White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham also called for a vote for Kamala Harris, calling Trump a liar with “no empathy or morals.” Mesa, Arizona mayor John Giles, anchor Ana Navarro, and former adviser to former vice president and conservative Mike Pence Olivia Troye also minced no words in calling for a vote against Trump. Former Illinois House Representative Adam Kinzinger, a member of the committee investigating the January 6, 2021 assault, was also expected in Chicago on Thursday.
There is nothing “conservative” about Donald Trump. Conservatives believe in the Constitution, not a “man’s” ego.
Endorsing American democracy and the future today, and leaving the past in the dust.
I’m endorsing @KamalaHarris pic.twitter.com/Dqnwpjen2m
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) August 4, 2024
Republican anti-Trumpism has thus taken on an unprecedented scale since the announcement of the former president’s third candidacy for the Oval Office. Former Republican representative Denver Riggleman called three weeks ago for a rally of “Republicans for Harris”, which already includes around forty executives from the “grand old party”, including former secretaries Chuck Hagel and Ray LaHood, around twenty elected members of Congress, but also former party chairman Chris Vance.
These elected officials hope to unite Republican voters who are resistant to Donald Trump, including some of the supporters of Nikki Haley, an unfortunate rival in the Republican primary who recently gave her support to the former president. This movement has not been abandoned by Kamala Harris’ campaign team, which now has a “national director of Republican engagement”, the former Republican Austin Weatherford.
Because even though polls credit the former senator with a narrow lead over Donald Trump, the election is shaping up to be very close. Rallying more moderate Republicans and independents is not an incongruous idea for the Democratic Party, which is battling to keep the White House after the presidential election in November.
