Dick Cheney was once vilified by Democrats. Now he’s backing Harris. Will it matter?
WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Dick Cheney is a career Republican who is still reviled by Democrats for his brazen defense of the Iraq war as vice president. But his partisan loyalties were set aside in an extraordinary way last week when he supported Democrat Kamala Harris for the White House.
Alberto Gonzales’ service in the George W. Bush administration was marred by debates over intrusive government surveillance and an abrupt purge of U.S. prosecutors that Democrats viewed with deep suspicion. Yet the former attorney general also opts for Haris about Republican Donald Trump.
The outpouring of support crystallized a remarkable evolution among the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which ruled Washington during the Bush years but was swept aside when Trump took control of the party. These figures, once reviled by Democrats, are so alarmed by the prospect of the former president’s return to power that they are prepared to oppose their own party’s nominee for the White House.
In doing so, they give Harris an important opportunity to expand her support base.
“It’s easier for prominent Republicans like Cheney and Gonzales to say, ‘I’m supporting Kamala Harris,’ because their old home has essentially been looted and destroyed,” said Will Marshall, the founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank. “The ties of partisanship, which are always strong in both parties, are weakened by the fact that Trump has made the current Republican Party absolutely unwelcoming to prominent Republicans who served in previous administrations.”
Bush himself will not follow suit. A spokesman says the former president has no plans to make any statements of support or publicly say how he will vote.
Harris has embraced the support of Republicans with whom she has little in common and whose support likely has more to do with opposition to Trump than support for her policies. She often notes that more than 200 Republicans have endorsed her, and her campaign said in an email highlighting Gonzales’ support that she welcomes “any American — regardless of party — who values democracy and the rule of law.”
Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who supported Harris and spoke at last month’s Democratic convention, said the effect of “proven, time-tested Republicans” backing Harris could persuade other Republicans who don’t like Trump to vote against him rather than sit out the election.
“I don’t know if we can convince anyone to go Trump to Harris,” Duncan said. “I think we’re going to go from convincing someone who’s just sitting at home and not voting for anyone to voting for Kamala Harris.”
But how much real influence the Republicans, long criticized by Democrats, have is unclear, especially given the ongoing raw emotions and Cheney’s polarizing personality over his decades in Washington.
While Harris’ campaign is enjoying the support, comedian Jon Stewart mocked Cheney’s endorsement on “The Daily Show,” addressing the former vice president with an expletive and shouting, “You were so close to destroying the whole world. We were so close.”
“Who the hell is going to influence that endorsement?” Stewart asked. “‘Well, I like the Democrats’ policy on child support, but are they bombing enough countries in the Middle East?'”
It would have long been unthinkable for Cheney to vote Democratic. He served three Republican presidents in roles ranging from White House chief of staff to secretary of defense to vice president.
Cheney has been criticized by Democrats on many fronts, including his fervent promotion of the defense contracting company he once helped lead, Halliburtonas well as his involvement in a scandal over the leaking of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plamewhose ambassadorial husband disputed the US intelligence that justified the invasion of Iraq.
After Cheney accidentally shot a friend while on a hunting trip in 2006, even Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and a veteran of Bush’s re-election campaign, suggested he might step aside.
“At some point, a hate magnet can attract so much hate that you don’t want to hold it in your hand anymore, you want to drop it,” she wrote in the Wall Street Journal at the time.
Yet Cheney endured through Bush’s two terms.
That Cheney “is now considered a mainstream Republican is a sad commentary on that party and all the more reason to keep Trump and the Republicans far from power in 2024,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.
Cheney, in his 2005 speech, derided critics of the Iraq war as “opportunists” and said the suggestion that the Bush administration had deliberately misled the public about the presence of weapons of mass destruction was “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible accusations ever made” in Washington. He later said the Democrats’ approach to the war would “validate the approach to al Qaeda,” earning him a rebuke from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
The ideological split within the Republican Party was clear long ago. Trump centered his 2016 campaign on a rejection of the old guard of the GOP base, including insisting, wrongly, that he had always been against the war.
Cheney was a prominent critic of Trump’s foreign policy, reprimanding the then-president during a closed meeting in 2019 due to public complaints about NATO’s role and the surprise announcement of the withdrawal of troops from Syria.
The fracture was visible again after the January 6, 2021, rel in the Capitol. Cheney visited the building on the first anniversary of the attacksitting with his daughter, then-Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in the front row of the Republican side of the House of Representatives as the party’s only two members at a pro forma session.
Liz Cheney, who was co-chair the House investigation in the siege before she lost her seat in the 2022 Republican primary, announced her support for Harris last weekfollowed by her father’s statement that Trump “can never be trusted with power again.”
Crystal McLaughlin, a 53-year-old health care worker in Greensboro, North Carolina, said she was “very, very nervous” when Cheney was vice president, but she appreciates the Cheneys’ support and hopes other Republicans will follow her lead.
“I don’t trust him, but you know, thank you for your support,” McLaughlin said, adding, “And hopefully your financial support as well.”
Gonzales, the former attorney general, said he spoke to Trump only once. But Gonzales emerged in a Politico op-ed Thursday as Trump’s latest prominent Republican critic. Gonzales cited the Capitol attack, Trump’s criminal charges and other factors that made him unfit for office and contemptuous of the rule of law.
“As the United States approaches a crucial election, I cannot sit idly by as Donald Trump — perhaps the greatest threat to the rule of law in a generation — contemplates a return to the White House,” he wrote.
That’s notable given that Gonzales was condemned by Democrats and some GOP lawmakers before resigning amid a scandal over the sudden firing of a group of U.S. prosecutors.
Some of those fired prosecutors said they felt pressured to investigate Democrats before the election. Gonzales insisted the firings were based on what he called the prosecutors’ lackluster performance records.
As White House counsel in 2004, Gonzales pushed to reauthorize a secret domestic spying program despite protests from the Justice Department. Although robust government surveillance was advocated by Republican leaders after the September 11, 2001, attacks, that support within the party has decreased significantly while lawmakers are inspired by Trump’s skepticism of the FBI.
“Every Republican at some point is going to have to take their medicine and admit that Donald Trump was wrong for our party,” said Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia. “It’s just a matter of when they do it.”
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Associated Press journalist Makiya Seminera in Greensboro, North Carolina, contributed to this report.