If Trump is the nominee, will it be time to depart from the Republican Party? And if the answer is yes, what to do in November and beyond?
Former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has become the most articulate voice of sanity on the right, does not want to crush one of the challengers’ chances, no matter how slight. So don’t expect her to do anything to foreclose whatever small possibility remains to defeat Trump in the primaries. That said, Cheney has begun to look ahead.
Last week, Cheney gave her most succinct and clear answer about her outlook on 2024. It bears emphasizing that she is not giving herself or others an “out” by suggesting they all hop on a third-party train to nowhere. Instead, she delivered the hard news: “There are some conservatives who are trying to make this claim that somehow [President] Biden is a bigger risk than Trump,” she said on “The View.” “My view is I disagree with a lot of Joe Biden’s policies. We can survive bad policies. We cannot survive torching the Constitution.”
Votes for a Libertarian, Green or No Labels candidate can only diminish the anti-Trump, save-democracy coalition. Just as we saw in 2020 — when Republicans including former Ohio governor John Kasich; John McCain’s widow Cindy McCain; former senators David Durenberger of Minnesota, Gordon J. Humphrey of New Hampshire and John Warner of Virginia; and a flock of former congressmen and George W. Bush aides endorsed Biden — sober and patriotic Republicans must know that the only candidate in the general election who can beat Trump, if he is the nominee, will be Biden.
If a strongman such as Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco or Jair Bolsonaro were the nominee, no one would dream of throwing their vote away on a fringe candidate. It would be essential to form a broad coalition, from the center-right to the left, in defense of democracy. Any risk that a character prepared to suspend the Constitution could get elected, use the military to suppress dissent and politicize the justice system (among other horrors) would be too great.
We should expect Cheney to join figures such as former congressman and fellow Jan. 6 select committee member Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) in endorsing Biden over Trump. She would not do so because she agrees with Biden’s policies, as she said, but, rather, because she has vowed to do everything in her power to keep Trump out of the Oval Office. She can stand up for still-persuadable fellow Republicans and ex-Republicans to explain the risk a Trump second term would pose not only to American democracy but also to the fate of democracies around the world (e.g., Taiwan, Ukraine) struggling to defend themselves against aggressive dictatorial regimes. The great test for her — and for our democracy — is whether she and like-minded conservatives can pull enough of the Republicans who are anti-Trump or whose support for Trump is merely soft into the Biden camp.
On “The View,” Cheney also explained, “I think that the Republican Party itself is clearly so caught up in this cult of personality that it’s very hard to imagine that the party can survive.” Remarkably for someone who spent her entire life in the GOP, she acknowledged, “I think increasingly it’s clear that once we get through 2024, we’re gonna have to have something else, something new.” She seemed finally to have given up on a reform movement within the GOP.
“I believe the country has to have a party that’s based on conservative principles and values, where we can engage … with the Democrats on substance and on policy,” she said. Certainly, instead of reactionary, radical change, the new conservative party could embrace the temperament that used to be associated with conservatism (e.g., gradualism, public virtue, humility). If she and like-minded conservatives help defeat Trump and put a stake in the cult of personality that replaced the Republican Party they knew, they still will need to decide what a coherent, effective conservative party agenda would look like in the 21st century.
Their foreign policy vision would likely reject Trump’s isolationism and embrace of dictators. But plenty would be left to consider, including whether and to what degree human rights shape policy, the appetite for unilateral military action and the approach to international trade (protectionist or free?). Determining how to best address China would properly be among the many policy debates. At least there would be a debate on serious policy matters.
Domestic policy choices might be more difficult for an alternative conservative party. It could go back to old positions, such as repealing the Affordable Care Act, supply-side tax cuts, preferences for oil and gas production, opposition to all gun legislation, and affirming antiabortion stances. This would be the GOP pre-Trump. However, there are real questions as to whether those positions have popular support or even seem feasible at this point. Some Republicans oppose abortion bans and support reasonable gun measures. Perhaps a new party could tolerate more diversity on issues.
A constructive Republican Party has been missing from national politics for so long that the prospect of policy innovation and debate sounds a bit strange but rather exciting! What would not be up for debate would be democracy itself, the rule of law or a depoliticized justice system and military.
Cheney is inarguably right in one respect: Unless a large, ideologically diverse pro-democracy alliance defeats Trump, conservatives won’t have a democratic system in which to hash out policies. Cheney’s highest calling now might well be to impress on her fellow citizens the urgency of that effort.
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