Dick Cheney was once vilified by Democrats. Now he's backing Harris. Will it matter?

WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — Dick Cheney is a career Republican still vilified by Democrats for his bullish defense of the Iraq War as vice president. But his partisan loyalties were cast aside in extraordinary fashion last week when he endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris for the White House.

Alberto Gonzales' service in George W. Bush's administration was roiled by debates over intrusive government eavesdropping and an abrupt purging of U.S. attorneys that Democrats regarded with intense suspicion. Yet the former attorney general is also opting for Harris over Republican Donald Trump.

The endorsements crystalized the remarkable evolution of the Republican Party's establishment wing, which ruled Washington during the Bush years only to be sidelined once Trump wrested control of the party. These figures, once reviled by Democrats, are so alarmed by the prospect of the former president's return to power that they are prepared to oppose their own party's nominee for the White House.

In the process, they are giving Harris a critical opening to broaden her base of support.

“It’s easier for prominent Republicans like Cheney and Gonzales to say, ‘I support Kamala Harris’ because, in effect, their old home has been ransacked and destroyed,” said Will Marshall, the founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank. “The ties of partisanship, which are always strong in both parties, are attenuated by the fact that Trump has made today’s Republican Party absolutely unwelcome for prominent Republicans who served in previous administrations.”

Bush himself will not follow suit. A spokesperson says the former president has no plans to make endorsements or say publicly how he will vote.

Harris has embraced the backing of Republicans with whom she shares little common ground and whose endorsement likely has more to do with opposition to Trump than support of her policy positions. She frequently mentions that more than 200 Republicans have endorsed her, and her campaign said in an email playing up Gonzales' backing that it welcomed into the fold “every American – regardless of party – who values democracy and the rule of law.”

Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who endorsed Harris and spoke at last month's Democratic convention, said the effect of “card-carrying, time-tested Republicans” who are behind Harris might persuade other Republicans who dislike Trump to vote against him rather than sitting out the election.

“I don’t know if we convince somebody to go Trump-to-Harris," Duncan said. “I think we go from convincing somebody just sitting at home, not voting for anybody, to voting for Kamala Harris.”

It's unclear whether the Republicans will have sway

Yet how much real influence Republicans long criticized by Democrats have is unclear, especially given lingering raw feelings and Cheney’s polarizing persona across decades in Washington.

Even as the Harris campaign basks in the support, comedian Jon Stewart mocked Cheney's endorsement on “The Daily Show," addressing the ex-vice president with an expletive and shouting: “You came this close to destroying the entire world. We were this close.”

“Who in God’s name is that endorsement gonna sway?" Stewart demanded. "‘Well, I like the Democrats’ policy on child tax credits, but are they bombing enough Middle Eastern countries?'”

It would have long been unfathomable for Cheney to vote Democratic. He served three Republican presidents in roles ranging from White House chief of staff to defense secretary and vice president.

Cheney was denounced by Democrats on many fronts, including for his staunch promotion of the defense contracting firm he once helped lead, Halliburton, as well as his entanglement in a scandal over the leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose ambassador-husband disputed the U.S. intelligence used to justify the Iraq invasion.

After Cheney accidentally shot a friend during a 2006 hunting trip, even Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and veteran of Bush's reelection campaign, suggested he might need to step aside.

“At a certain point, a hate magnet can draw so much hate you don’t want to hold it in your hand anymore, you want to drop it,” she wrote then in the Wall Street Journal.

Yet Cheney endured through Bush's two terms.

That Cheney "is now considered a mainstream Republican is a sad commentary on that party and all the more reason to keep Trump and Republicans far from power in 2024,” said Adam Green co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Cheney, in 2005 speech, derided critics of the Iraq War as “opportunists” and said the suggestion that the Bush administration had purposely misled the public about the presence of weapons of mass destruction was “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired” in Washington. He later said the Democrats’ approach to the war would “validate the al-Qaida approach,” drawing a rebuke from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The GOP's ideological divide

The ideological split within the Republican Party was evident long ago. Trump centered his 2016 campaign around a repudiation of the old-guard GOP base, including insisting, incorrectly, that he had always been opposed to the war.

Cheney was a prominent critic of Trump's foreign policy, rebuking the then-president at a closed-door retreat in 2019 for public complaints about the role of NATO and the surprise announcement of the withdrawal of troops from Syria.

The rupture was again on display after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Cheney visited the building on the attack's one-year anniversary, sitting with his daughter, then-Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in the front row of the Republican side of the the House chamber as the only two members of the party at a pro forma session.

Liz Cheney, who co-chaired the House investigation into the siege before losing her seat in the 2022 Republican primary, announced her support of Harris last week, followed by her father's statement that Trump "can never be trusted with power again.”

Crystal McLaughlin, a 53-year-old Greensboro, North Carolina, health care compliance worker, said she was “very, very nervous” when Cheney was vice president but that she appreciates the Cheneys' endorsements and hopes other Republicans will follow suit.

“I don’t trust him, but you know, thank you for your support,” McLaughlin said, adding, “And hopefully your financial support.”

Gonzales, the former attorney general, said he has spoken with Trump only once. But Gonzales surfaced in a Politico opinion piece Thursday as Trump's latest prominent Republican detractor. Gonzales cited the Capitol attack, Trump's criminal cases and other factors in branding him unfit for office and contemptuous of the rule of law.

“As the United States approaches a critical election, I can’t sit quietly as Donald Trump — perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation — eyes a return to the White House,” he wrote.

That is remarkable considering that Gonzales faced condemnation from Democrats, and some GOP lawmakers, before resigning amid a scandal over the abrupt dismissal of a group of U.S. attorneys.

Some of those fired prosecutors said they felt pressured to investigate Democrats before elections. Gonzales maintained the dismissals were based on what he said were the prosecutors’ lackluster performance records.

As White House counsel in 2004, Gonzales pressed to reauthorize a secret domestic spying program, over the Justice Department’s protests. Though robust government surveillance had been championed by Republican leaders after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that support has significantly waned within the party as lawmakers take their cue from Trump's skepticism of the FBI.

“Every Republican, for the most part, at some point, is going to have to take their medicine and admit that Donald Trump was wrong for our party," said Duncan, the former Georgia lieutenant governor. “It’s just a matter of when they do it.”

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Associated Press writer Makiya Seminera in Greensboro, North Carolina, contributed to this report.