Exit, Voice, and the Post-Trump GOP

Can a decent Republican support Trump this year? Can a viable Republican reject him?

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

If it is the fall of a presidential election year and Donald Trump is on the ballot, that means it is time for some Republicans to support his opponent. 2024 is no exception. A big chunk of GOP national security officials have endorsed Kamala Harris. George W. Bush’s former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced his support for Harris in Politico. Liz and then Dick Cheney offered their explicit backing as well. Over the weekend Jeff Flake endorsed Harris.

How much will these endorsements matter? The Washington Post’s Tyler Pager wrote up the Harris campaign’s thinking:

As polls show that Harris and Trump remain in a tight race, the Harris campaign is hoping endorsements from former Republican luminaries will help win over Republican-leaning and independent voters who are deeply opposed to Trump but are struggling with the idea of voting for a Democrat in general or Harris specifically.

Candidates often covet endorsements from the opposing party, as it allows them to expand their appeal to a wider audience. But in the Trump era, many high-profile Republicans are particularly opposed to their nominee, and the Harris campaign hopes their approval could make it more palatable for ordinary Republicans to break ranks.

Still, given Trump’s dominance of the GOP, it is not clear whether there are enough wavering Republicans to affect the race — and Trump, in private fundraisers, has dismissed the notion that Republican voters would support Harris, telling donors he is not worried about it.

“Nobody cares what these disgruntled and deranged people have to say,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement.

Leavitt’s statement points to one explanation for why some obvious folks like, say, Mike Pence, have kept their mouths shut or are focusing primarily on down-ballot races.¹ Pence very much wants to be a part of the post-Trump GOP. That will be a difficult feat to pull off in the best of circumstances; if Pence endorsed a Democrat for president it would likely be impossible.

For a more acute example of this conundrum, look no further than Ohio governor Mike DeWine. Politico’s Jonathan Martin has a long, fascinating essay on Springfield, Ohio in the aftermath of JD Vance and Donald Trump’s bigoted, purposeful lies about the Haitian community legally residing there. But it’s really about DeWine coping with what Vance and Trump hath wrought. DeWine is no Johnny-come-lately to the plight of Haitians. As Martin notes, DeWine and his wife Fran have travelled to Haiti over 20 times since the 1990s.

Martin makes the DeWines’ frustration with Trump and Vance palpable. Indeed, DeWine’s decision to let Martin embed with him is an outgrowth of that frustration:

What came next, the real-world effect of what Fran DeWine called the “smearing” of Springfield. And namely how the burden of leadership fell on the governor.

The governor was initially reluctant to let me see that story close up, to let me embed with him in Springfield. He didn’t want to expose or exacerbate tensions in the community.

Yet as Senator JD Vance (R-OH) continued to insist that his lie about eating pets was true and to falsely call the Haitians “illegal aliens,” DeWine grew “just more infuriated,” as he put it to me over dinner.

“Yeah, after a while, because it got cumulative, and then you keep thinking, ‘Well, they’re going to stop this,’” he said. “Well, they didn’t stop this, they just keep going.”….

What plainly irks the governor is how Trump and Vance keep calling the Haitians “illegal” migrants.

“To say that these people are illegal is just not right, you can’t make up stuff like that,” DeWine told me.

Martin’s entire story is worth reading. It’s clear why DeWine has won so many elections in Ohio, even when it was a battleground state. He excels at the blocking and tackling of politics and governance. Mike DeWine is also 77 years old and has likely run his last election. So it was interesting to see that Martin asked the DeWines who they would be voting for in November:

When I asked the DeWines if the last few weeks had made it harder for them to support the Trump-Vance ticket, they chuckled to break the tension — a signature tic of both — and Fran spoke first.

“I’m not telling anybody who I’m voting for,” she said, before noting there were still six weeks left in the race.

The governor insisted he was still supporting Trump and unfurled a realpolitik case for his endorsement.

“If you want to continue to be effective you have to do it from inside your own party,” said DeWine, who has an overwhelmingly Republican legislature. “My goal has always been to get things done. I’ve been I think successful at it. And I’ve got two years and three months and I want to continue to get stuff done.”

Has he talked to Trump or Vance about their comments? No.

“It’s clear nothing that I would say would alter” their conduct, DeWine said.

For many, that decision automatically disqualifies DeWine from the Land of Decent Politicians, especially given Trump’s turn towards even more violent rhetoric in recent days and weeks.

In a simpler world, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World would agree. In the world we live in, however, a few hard truths need to be acknowledged about the state of American politics in 2024:

1. The Republican Party will not die of shame even if Trump loses in November;

2. There is no sign that the GOP is disintegrating as a major party;

3. GOP officials who endorse Harris will not be welcomed back into the Republican Party — rather, they will be scapegoated if Trump loses.

4. At some point in the future a Republican will win the presidency.

In a 50/50 polity, this means that as much as I would like decent politicians like DeWine to leave the GOP, that would not advance the cause of the United States returning to stable democracy. I would prefer that they exercise voice rather than exit.

Does this mean that DeWine has done all that he can here? No. I think the best GOP officials who want to stay in the party can explicitly state that they are not endorsing or voting for Trump. For example, in a Salt Lake Tribune interview Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson said she would not be endorsing anyone prior to Election Day. She elaborated on this thinking:

I never want to conflate a person’s character with who they support politically, but I will say that I have a real struggle with people who do know better and should know better at the top of Republican politics, who are sowing doubt and chaos and confusion for political gain — no matter who it is. And yeah, it’s been starting at the top, but it’s also trickling down through the ranks, and anybody who participates in that is not doing their country any service.

So no, DeWine’s political strategy is not perfect. But I cannot get too angry at him. He is a decent person, and the GOP will need some of those people to guide its post-Trump future.

As much as I want Donald Trump to lose — and I really, really want that — I also want a return to a world in which both major parties were institutional stewards of the system. That cannot happen if the Mike DeWines of the world leave the GOP.

1. There are other, more disturbing reasons. Pager writes that the Harris campaign has also targeted Mitt Romney but, “Romney, who has frequently criticized Trump, has also expressed concerns about endangering the safety of his family if Trump is elected again, a fear also voiced by others who have spoken out against the former president.”