The Bush-Cheney dynasty isn't backing Trump. There's a time that would have been unthinkable
WASHINGTON – So tenacious conservative Dick Cheney and progressive icon Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are voting for the same presidential candidate.
You don't see that every election.
Former President Donald Trump's bid to regain power is generating all kinds of odd situations, including stalwart opposition from party leaders and members of the Republican political establishment such as Cheney, former Rep. Liz Cheney and 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The Cheneys have gone so far as to say they will vote for Trump's opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Speaking of dynasties, former President George W. Bush does not plan to endorse his party's standard bearer this year, and he won't say how he or former first lady Laura Bush will vote in November, a spokesperson confirmed over the weekend.
It's a dynamic that would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago: The GOP's most recent president and presidential nominee who came before the party's current pick won't publicly back him.
Americans never would have expected Romney not to receive Bush's support in 2012 ? or the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., not to get Bush's backing in 2008. Former President Bill Clinton supported then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, even after he defeated former first lady Hillary Clinton in that year's Democratic primary.
Many of these prominent Republicans who have split with Trump have made themselves clear: It's both policy and personality differences that are fueling this fissure in the Republican Party. And those are differences that could decide the presidential race between Trump and Harris.
"What's happened to the Republican Party today, you know, is indefensible," Liz Cheney said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "And I hope to be able to rebuild ... after this cycle."
Trump and allies say the party has already been rebuilt via the MAGA movement, and the vast majority of Republican voters remain with them while the critics are "Republicans in Name Only."
"Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter," Trump said in a weekend Truth Social post.
In the meantime, the political world is trying to get used to the idea that the Cheneys – among the most conservative political figures of the last half-century – are backing Harris, a product of liberal California. Some cited Bill Murray's character in the 1984 film Ghostbusters: "Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!"
Policy and personality
Some of the Republicans who have balked at Trump's rise over the last 8 years genuinely disagree with him on the issues facing the nation, including items that were party dogma for decades. Amid Trump's gradual GOP takeover, starting with his 2016 election, the Republican Party has become more interventionist in the economy and more isolationist in foreign policy.
Trump built his 2016 campaign in part by attacking the kinds of Republicans who are attacking him now, the party's more traditional prior leaders. That includes several members of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney.
To be sure, Trump attacked Obama and Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, over just about everything. He also had harsh words for Bush and Cheney, particularly over the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2007-08 financial crisis. The New York businessman condemned long-time Republican support for free trade and international military alliances.
In the meantime, some Republican leaders counter-attacked Trump over tariff proposals that would wreck free trade. They also said his disdain for NATO and other military alliances can only embolden American adversaries Russia and China.
These Republicans have chafed at any number of Trump actions: His expressions of sympathy for the near-insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021; his near-constant threats to prosecute political opponents, from President Joe Biden to Liz Cheney; and his semi-joke to be a "dictator" only on day one with respect to border security and energy production.
In her ABC interview, Liz Cheney said of Trump: "At the end of the day, I think it's important for people to recognize, he's not a conservative."
Sometimes it's personal for Bushes, Cheneys, Romneys
There is also some personality to these arguments between Trump and a slice of his party.
During Trump's presidency, Liz Cheney and Romney became two of the most prominent Republicans to speak out against him. The ultimate: In early 2021, Cheney and nine other House Republicans voted to impeach Trump over the violence of Jan. 6. Romney also voted to convict Trump in his Senate trial.
The former president retaliated, including in backing a Republican challenger to Cheney's congressional seat in 2022. Cheney lost in a blowout despite recruiting a Republican star – former Wyoming congressman and Vice President Dick Cheney – to cut an ad for her denouncing Trump as the biggest threat to democracy in the nation's history.
The elder Cheney used similar language Friday in announcing he would vote for Harris.
"In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," Cheney said. "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."
Other Republicans – including Bush, Romney, and Trump's own vice president, Mike Pence – have refused to endorse a second term. None have said they would actually vote for Harris. While Bush has largely bowed out of political life, Trump's attacks have touched him as well. After all, Trump launched personal criticism of Jeb Bush in the 2016 Republican primary, dubbing him "low energy."
Bush has occasionally tangled with Trump, but it has rarely been direct. For example, during a 2021 ceremony in Pennsylvania to mark the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, Bush made a point of saying that "so much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment."
After the attempted insurrection by Trump loyalists on Jan. 6, 2021, Bush issued a statement saying that he and Laura Bush found it "a sickening and heartbreaking sight."
While, again, not citing Trump by name, Bush added: "This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic – not our democratic republic."
Laura Bush has also rarely weighed in on politics in recent years. However, she called some of the Trump administration's border policies "cruel" and "immoral" in a Washington Post op-ed published in 2018. "It breaks my heart."
Will Dick Cheney sway other Republicans?
This isn't just any Republican. Few people have done more to promote conservative causes than Cheney, who enhanced the powers of the vice presidency to promote issues like oil-and-gas production and military action to remove Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein.
Cheney was also not shy about tangling with Democratic adversaries, of which he had more than a few.
When Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy questioned Cheney's ties to the oil business in 2004, Cheney responded with an expletive suggesting that the Vermont senator perform an anatomical impossibility. (“That’s sort of the best thing I ever did," Cheney later told radio host Dennis Miller.)
Still, Cheney's decision to join Team Harris drew ridicule from some remaining Republicans.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders, a former Trump press secretary who also appeared on ABC's "This Week," said she doesn't understand how any of the dissident Republicans can consider themselves conservative while saying they are voting for Harris.
"That doesn't make you a conservative," Sanders said. "It certainly doesn't make you a Republican. I think it makes you somebody who wants to protect the establishment."
Sanders and others also pointed out that anti-Trump Republicans are a distinct minority. In his first two elections, Trump received 88% and 94% of the Republican vote, according to exit polls; he is on track to again win more than 90% of the GOP vote overall.
There are a lot of different ways to look at this. In her appearance on ABC News, Liz Cheney said that President Ronald Reagan – a godfather of the conservative movement, winner of two landslide elections in the 1980s – would never have endorsed Trump.
Trump's agenda "is not the party of Ronald Reagan," she said.
Trump and allies, meanwhile, often cast him as legatee of Reagan. The actor Dennis Quaid, who is portraying Reagan in a new film, told CNN anchor Chris Wallace that the two were men of different times, but "I do feel that the principles of Ronald Reagan and the principles of Donald J. Trump are very similar.”
Wallace didn't agree: "I've got to say, I think Reagan would have been appalled by Trump's behavior."
Others wonder at the new-found Democratic respect for Dick Cheney.
Meghan McCain, John McCain's daughter, said on the social media site X: "Seeing all of these extreme progressives suddenly become Dick Cheney fans is objectively hilarious."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney aren't backing Donald Trump as GOP splits