In Dante’s “Inferno,” as I’ve previously written, moral cowards aren’t even allowed into hell. They are the “sorry souls” stuck in the vestibule where they are doomed to be forgotten. “The world will let no fame of theirs endure,” Dante’s guide, Virgil, explains. “Let us not talk of them but look and pass.”
Actually, let’s talk about them.
We know their names — the anti-Trump Republicans like former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Mitt Romney, former Rep. Paul Ryan, former Gov. Chris Christie, former President George W. Bush, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens — who reject Trump but cannot bring themselves to vote for the one candidate who could stop him. And we also know the names of the allegedly anti-Trump conservatives who have since fallen in line behind a second Trump term — from former Gov. Nikki Haley to Gov. Chris Sununu and the editors of National Review. Polls would suggest that the vast majority of Republican and conservative voters are following their lead.
Many of these officials and pundits recognize the dangers that Trump poses, but want to preserve their “relevance” in the party.
Many of these officials and pundits recognize the dangers that Trump poses, but want to preserve their “relevance” in the party; others clearly hope for Trump’s defeat, but want to keep their hands clean by staying above the fray and casting a write-in vote.
But then there are also the lifelong conservatives who have defied partisan loyalty and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris: former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Rep. Liz Cheney; former Rep. Adam Kinzinger; Judge Michael Luttig; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez; retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal; Georgia’s former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; former Sens. Jeff Flake and Nancy Kassebaum; First Lt. Jimmy McCain; former Rep. Joe Walsh; Times columnist David French, Washington Post columnist George Will, and a host of former GOP aides.
Last week, I joined them, and made it clear to my fellow Wisconsinites that I intend to vote for Harris.
To be sure, the pro-Harris conservatives represent a tiny faction — you might even say a rump caucus — of the GOP. But despite the small numbers, we could still be important in what promises to be a razor-close race. A recent New York Times poll found that Harris “has begun making inroads among Republicans: 9 percent said they planned to support her, up slightly from 5 percent last month.” In Wisconsin (where the race is essentially tied), the latest Marquette Law School poll found a small, but potentially decisive group of undecided voters: “conflicted partisans are mostly Republican voters who have big personal qualms about Trump.”
So let’s not the not underestimate the significance of the GOP defections. A while back, I wrote in The Atlantic: “Before Trump, the ideological divide between Harris and conservative Republicans might have been too large to bridge. But this is not a normal campaign.”
And that is the Great Divide.
Many on the right simply cannot shift their mindset and stop seeing this election as a more-or-less traditional choice between the right and the left. Yes, they say, Trump is deplorable and unfit, but Kamala Harris is a progressive. They cite her position on taxes, on guns, on the border, on transgender rights, the environment, business regulations and spending.
None of this is normal. And the standards and issues that used to animate us no longer apply.
But the newly minted pro-Harris conservatives recognize that this election isn’t about those things at all. They recognize that a second Trump term will transcend typical ideological/political differences.
Leave aside for a moment Trump’s serial lying, fraud, grifts, alleged sexual assaults, criminal indictments and one very public attempt to overthrow an election. Set aside his abandonment of free trade and fiscal restraint. This is a man who has called for terminating “all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”; who promises a presidency built around retribution; whose campaign has become a bullhorn for bigotry; who is increasingly leaning into fascist rhetoric, and who leads his rally crowds in cheering for Russian President Vladimir Putin and booing Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy. And who now threatens to use the military against political protesters and the so-called “enemy within.”
None of this is normal. And the standards and issues that used to animate us no longer apply. When she joined Harris in Ripon, Wisconsin, this month, Liz Cheney reminded the audience why she wouldn’t be sitting this election out.
“Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our Capitol, to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name, and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself,” she said. “I don’t care if you are a Democrat or Republican or an independent, that is depravity and we must never become numb to it.”
Indeed, Cheney has been one of the clearest and most outspoken voices on why the dangers posed by Trump disqualify him as a presidential candidate. “We can survive bad policies. We cannot survive torching the Constitution,” she told Joy Behar on “The View” back in January.
This is the theme echoed by essentially all of the conservatives who have broken ranks: We may disagree on policy, but this is an emergency. And in every genuine crisis, people of goodwill put aside their differences. When the emergency passes, we can go back to arguing about other things; but right now, the moment demands that we make common cause, and put country over party. Even, and especially, if that means voting for Kamala Harris.