MALVERN, Pa. \u2014 Vice President Kamala Harris joined forces with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney here Monday to denounce GOP nominee Donald Trump as unfit for office, part of the Harris campaign\u2019s last-ditch effort to win over moderate Republicans and independent voters.<\/p>\n
The unlikely pair was scheduled to appear later in Michigan and Wisconsin, holding onstage conversations in an effort to persuade undecided voters, especially Republicans with misgivings about Trump, to cast their ballot for Harris. With the occasional feel of a buddy movie, the two women \u2014 in similar pantsuits, Harris in green and Cheney in blue \u2014 assailed Trump as Harris heaped praise on Cheney for her support.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the Constitution,\u201d Cheney said. \u201cAnd you have to choose in this race between someone who has been faithful to the Constitution \u2014 who will be faithful \u2014 and Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cheney, a staunch conservative who served as the third-ranking House Republican until 2021, called endorsing Harris \u201cnot at all a difficult choice.\u201d She warned about the risk posed by Trump\u2019s relationships with dictators, saying that she has seen \u201chow quickly democracies can unravel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, emerged as one of the most vocal GOP critics of Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, and later went on to lose her seat in a Republican primary because of that criticism. She endorsed Harris in September and appeared at her first campaign event with the vice president this month in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
Cheney and her father are perhaps the most prominent Republicans to endorse Harris, the result of an intensive effort by the Harris campaign to recruit high-profile conservatives to back the Democratic nominee. Given the closeness of the election across all the battleground states, Harris\u2019s advisers believe that attracting even a sliver of disaffected Republicans could prove to be pivotal.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Susan Ford Bales, the daughter of former president Gerald Ford, announced that she was endorsing Harris.<\/p>\n
At the Pennsylvania event, Cheney frequently noted that she has vast disagreements with Harris on a range of policy issues. But she said that Harris, unlike Trump, \u201cwill always do what she believes is right for this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also criticized Trump\u2019s character more broadly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to reject the kind of vile vitriol that we\u2019ve seen from Donald Trump,\u201d Cheney said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to reject the misogyny that we\u2019ve seen from Donald Trump. \u2026 We have the chance to remind people that we are a good country. We are good and honorable people.\u201d<\/p>\n
In advance of Monday\u2019s events, Trump posted on Truth Social to deride Cheney as a \u201cwar hawk.\u201d The former president has been seeking to appeal to Arab American voters in Michigan.<\/p>\n
\u201cArab Voters are very upset that Comrade Kamala Harris, the Worst Vice President in the History of the United States and a Low IQ individual, is campaigning with \u2018dumb as a rock\u2019 War Hawk, Liz Cheney, who, like her father, the man that pushed [President George W.] Bush to ridiculously go to War in the Middle East, also wants to go to War with every Muslim Country known to mankind,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
Harris is pushing hard to broaden her appeal to centrist and Republican-leaning voters. She has distanced herself from some of the liberal policy positions she took in the 2020 Democratic primary, and on Monday she reiterated her promise to appoint a Republican to her cabinet if she wins.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a healthy two-party system,\u201d Harris said. \u201cWe need to be able to have these pretty intense debates about issues that are grounded in fact.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine!\u201d Cheney, seated next to Harris, chimed in.<\/p>\n
As the crowd cheered, Harris said, \u201cWow, can you believe that\u2019s an applause line?\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist and former chief of staff to Sen. Joe Manchin III (I-W.Va.), questioned the strategy of deploying Cheney, arguing that it does little to address voters\u2019 main concern, which is the economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot sure what turnout model they are looking at, but there is no Cheney bloc of voters that I am aware of that will win this election for Harris,\u201d Kofinis said. \u2018Even worse, the more events they do with her, the more they remind Democrats, progressives and voters in general that her father was Dick Cheney and the enduring damage he did to this nation.\u201d Many progressives see Dick Cheney as an architect of the Iraq War, which they regard as an enormous foreign policy blunder.<\/p>\n
Even as she faces an electorate yearning for change, Harris has shied away from identifying clear differences with President Joe Biden. When asked by the moderator to outline her agenda, Harris said: \u201cMine will not be a continuation of the Biden administration. I bring to it my own ideas, my own experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she did not articulate specific differences. Rather, Harris went on to explain her vision for an \u201copportunity economy\u201d and her plan to address the nation\u2019s housing shortage. Last week, Harris told NBC News that it was not part of the American tradition for vice presidents to criticize the president they serve.<\/p>\n
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pennsylvania), who represents Chester County after flipping the seat in 2018, said she had asked the Harris campaign for the vice president and Cheney to appear in this swing district.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is absolutely where the rubber meets the road, literally where the red meets the blue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She added, \u201cIt\u2019s pretty grave when somebody as serious as [Cheney] and her father are coming out with this really important message to the American people, to Republicans and independents specifically, that this is a very different election.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several people in the audience suggested that Harris was having at least modest success in attracting former GOP voters. Mary Jean Moroz, who said she was a registered Republican until the Jan. 6 attack, gushed about watching Harris and Cheney onstage together. She voted for Harris by mail last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was nice to hear two women from two different parties come together with great ideas,\u201d said Moroz, 60. \u201cIt\u2019s very reassuring to see someone from my former party be so supportive of a Democrat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glenn Gerhard, a registered Republican who voted for the libertarian candidate in the last two presidential elections, said he mailed in his ballot for Harris last week, marking his first time voting for a Democratic presidential nominee.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my first time voting for Democrat, and I may never again,\u201d he said. \u201cHopefully I will never again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gerhard, a 63-year-old professor at Temple University, said Trump \u201cwas unacceptable for any kind of office.\u201d He called the former president one of the \u201ccrudest, lewdest and disgusting individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI want my party back,\u201d Gerhard said. \u201cWe have to defeat Trump in as loud and dramatic way as possible and then start getting back to the roots of the party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amy Wang contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
MALVERN, Pa. \u2014 Vice President Kamala Harris joined forces with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney here Monday to denounce GOP nominee Donald Trump as unfit for office, part of the Harris campaign\u2019s last-ditch effort to win over moderate Republicans and independent voters. The unlikely pair was scheduled to appear later in Michigan and Wisconsin, holding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}