Country Before Party

 

In August, former Georgia Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan, addressing his fellow Republicans, said, “If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, you’re not a Democrat. You’re a patriot.” 

Hundreds of prominent Republicans have endorsed Harris for president. The growing list include ultra-conservative former Vice-President Dick Cheney, leading conservative legal scholar and retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, dozens of other retired Republican judges, former Republican Senators and Representatives including former Kansas Senator Nancy Kassebaum and other former Kansas officials, 238 former presidential staff from four Republican presidential tickets, and former Trump White House officials including 20 of his Cabinet members. In addition, scores of retired top military officers and more than 700 of the most senior national security leaders of both parties and independents have endorsed Harris. Trump’s vice-president has refused to endorse him.

Most of these Republicans surely disagree with many of Harris’s policies but put country before party because they understand that Trump is a clear and present danger to the American experiment in self-rule. Dick Cheney: “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.” Judge Luttig: “In the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law.”

Fortunately, that “one candidate for the presidency” is an optimistic and experienced public servant who has defended the people’s interests as attorney general of our largest state and as a senator and vice-president. She has run a nearly faultless campaign holding dozens of rallies and interviews without once resorting to the often-dangerous lies that are a daily feature of the Trump campaign. Harris dominated him in their debate so thoroughly that he was exposed as weak and small. He refuses to debate her again.

Harris helped shape economic policies that ended the failed Republican “trickle down” policies dating to the 1980s. Policies now favor workers over the wealthy. Unions have been reinvigorated after decades of decline, and their successes have helped drive a 4 percent rise in wages in the past year (with women making significant gains). America now enjoys the healthiest economy of any major nation, with a growing GDP, low unemployment, nearly normal inflation, rising wages, and a record high stock market. 

Crime is related to the economy, and FBI data show that violent crime is at a 50-year low. Homicides fell 12 percent from 2022 to 2023, the largest one-year drop in nearly six decades—hardly the hellscape that Trump rages about. He likes to blame immigrants for an imaginary crime wave, but the crime rate among immigrants is lower than among long-time Americans. Ironically, Trump is a crime wave himself with 34 felony convictions, adjudication as a sex offender, and indictments for several additional felonies including his role in the deadly Capitol riot of 2021. 

Less interested in the nation’s good than his own, Trump didn’t want the border situation improved so he could campaign on it. When a bipartisan, but mostly Republican, immigration bill looked as if it would pass Congress this year, he told Republicans to drop it, which they did. 

Harris was directly involved in passing the Infrastructure Law now improving roads, bridges, and more across the country, in the most comprehensive climate change legislation of any country, and has vowed to work to restore women’s right to make their own reproductive decisions. Both her record and her vision make her the patriotic choice.

Early voting begins in Kansas on Saturday, October 19. Election Day is November 5. Be a patriot. Vote.