Can Democrats and Republicans Work Together to Beat Trumpism?

Do you believe??

Democrats Stepping Up

I have to admit that when I first started thinking about this topic I expected it to be about how Democrats have shown themselves willing to work with Republicans in order to defeat Trumpist candidates. That there was no reciprocation from Never Trump Republicans to return the favor where they could.

I was prepared to talk about how Democrats in Utah were foregoing putting up their own candidate to take on insurrectionist Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) by supporting the independent candidacy of Evan McMullin.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) last month began outreach efforts to Democratic voters in her state. Her campaign is encouraging Wyoming Democrats to consider reregistering as Republicans in order to vote for her in the August 16th Republican primary. It’s not clear how receptive Democrats have been to her efforts or if there are even enough Democrats in Wyoming to effect the outcome of Cheney’s primary. The fact that Cheney is attempting this means that there is some hope that Democrats are open to the idea of voting for her especially given her stellar leadership on the January 6th Committee.

Committee Shenanigans

And speaking of the January 6th Committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made the move to put Cheney on the committee, along with fellow Republican Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). This was a very clever stroke on Pelosi’s part. It has served the committee well to have two conservative Republicans take the lead in the investigation of the January 6th insurrection and former President Donald Trump’s role in it.

Democrats would have been well within their rights to ignore all the Republicans after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), along with Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), torpedoed the select, nonpartisan 9-11 style committee at the last minute which had been negotiated by both Republicans and Democrats.

Pelosi then offered a bipartisan House committee evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans would have the power to call witnesses and to exert some control over whom the Democrats could call as witnesses. McCarthy tried to scuttle that as well by nominating three Republicans that had voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election: Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jim Banks (R-IN) and Troy Nehls (R-TX). McCarthy also nominated Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Kelly Armstrong (R-ND). Pelosi rejected the nominations of Jordan and Banks on the grounds that they had made statements which would put into question the integrity of the investigation.

In response to Pelosi rejecting two of his nominees McCarthy withdrew the rest of his nominees and promised not to help further with the January 6th Committee. He has attacked the J6 Committee as a partisan witch-hunt ever since.

J6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) has let Cheney and Kinzinger take the lead in questioning witnesses and presenting evidence. Democrats did not have to allow Cheney and Kinzinger to have such prominence on the Committee. That Thompson and his fellow Democrats has is indicative of the House Democrat’s willingness to work with Republicans who are not election denialists to fight along side them to protect our Democracy from the ongoing attack by the Republican Party.

Not Feeling the Love

I looked high and low for similar stories of Republicans who say that saving Democracy is their number one issue supporting Democratic candidates where they have a chance to beat an authoritarian Republican candidate.

Surely there must be Republicans out there supporting Democratic challengers to candidates like:

• Missouri Senate candidate Eric Greitens who has been accused of taking naked pictures and assaulting a woman literally tied up in his basement and physically abusing his wife and children, or

• Florida’s Ron DeSantis who is busily building his own personal "election security" police force, putting LGTBQ+ people back into school closets and requiring state universities to report the ideological viewpoints of their faculty and students to the State and could face budget cuts if DeSantis thinks they do not have enough “viewpoint diversity”, or

• Wisconsin incumbent Senator Ron “Ivermectin” Johnson who is up for reelection this year and has not seen a conspiracy theory he hasn’t liked and even said he would have been afraid if the Capitol rioters had been black.

But no, there had been no incoming help from moderate Republicans to unseat any of these candidates.

Help is on the way . . .?

Then I came across this story in The Hill today:

Group of Pennsylvania Republicans back Democrat Shapiro for governor

A group of Pennsylvania Republicans threw their support behind Democratic state Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s gubernatorial bid on Wednesday, going against their own party’s gubernatorial nominee, state Sen. Doug Mastriano. 

The Pennsylvania Republicans supporting Shapiro are Morgan Boyd, the sitting chairman of the Lawrence County Board of Commissioners, and eight former GOP officials: former Rep. Charlie Dent, former state Rep. Jim Greenwood, former state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman, former state House Speaker Denny O’Brien, former state Reps. Dave Steil and Lita Cohen, former Lieutenant Gov. Robert Jubelirer, and former Montgomery County GOP Chairman Ken Davis.

When the story first broke there were only four Republicans taking the risk to endorse the Democrat Shapiro over Republican insurrectionist Doug Mastriano for the Pennsylvania Governor’s race. Only a few hours later we are now up to nine . . . NINE!

It was like drinking a glass of ice water after wandering through a hot desert for days.

We still don’t know how effective this Republican support will be for Shapiro or other Democratic candidates if this type of support starts popping up all over the country. After all, the Republican electorate seems quite intent on ignoring these Republican officials or even turning on them as they have so many other times in the past.

But if they can peel off 2%, 3% or even 4% of moderate Republican voters and turn them into temporary Democratic voters there is a real chance that the autocratic Red Wave the pundits are sure will happen will fizzle out or maybe . . . dare we dream? . . . turn Blue.

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Author’s Note: I apologize for the delay getting this newsletter out. I meant to get it out last week. Had it all typed up and everything but then lost access to the draft and had to contact Substack for help recovering it. They were very helpful and now we’re back in business!