More Republicans Endorsing Kamala Harris Is Great And All, But It Doesn’t Erase Past GOP Harms

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to supporters during a campaign rally at West Allis Central High School on July 23, 2024, in West Allis, Wisconsin. | Source: Jim Vondruska / Getty

It takes a particular type of person to believe that having the support of Ronald Reagan is a flex.

On Sunday, 17 former staff members of the late former Republican president announced their endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

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In their joint statement released to CBS News , the ex-staffers claimed that if Reagan were alive, he would have supported Harris too.

“President Ronald Reagan famously spoke about a ‘Time for Choosing.’ While he is not here to experience the current moment, we who worked for him in the White House, in the administration, in campaigns and on his personal staff, know he would join us in supporting the Harris-Walz ticket,” the statement says in part.

“The time for choosing we face today is a choice between integrity and demagoguery, and the choice must be Harris-Walz,” the group added. “Our votes in this election are less about supporting the Democratic Party and more about our resounding support for democracy.”

I strongly question the idea that the man who originally coined the political slogan “Make America Great Again” and launched his presidential bid in 1980 with a speech about “states rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, would be a Kamala Harris booster.

Reagan’s former staffers would likely counter that sentiment by invoking Reagan and Trump’s diverging views on immigration, foreign policy and other policy issues. But such distinctions belie the true motivations of both political leaders and their supporters.

It’s genuinely funny to read Reagan staffers condemn demagoguery as if Ronald Reagan’s 1976 speech about “welfare queens” doesn’t fall under the same category.

Reagan might have been sort of better at masking his racism and corruption than Trump depending on who you poll, but they’re two celebrity racists that governed in the interest of the ultra rich.

Their shortcomings as politicians were excused by the majority’s “cultural anxiety,” and as a result of their respective election wins, each ushered in generational damage to the country as a result of times in office – damage that disproportionately impacted Black people.

Unfortunately, Kamala Harris needs every vote she can get in order to become the next president, and the more white voters she is able to get, the better her chances are.

White people love Ronald Reagan, and based on the appeal of the latest Reagan biopic , enough folks continue to lionize the man. So even if I think the racist ghost of Ronald Reagan should be left out of the election conversation, I understand touting the Reagan would’ve supported Kamala Harris line.

Ronald Reagan (right) with his Vice President George H. W. Buh. | Source: Dirck Halstead / Getty

On Wednesday, more than 100 Republican former senior national security and foreign policy officials — including some from Reagan’s administration — released a letter endorsing Vice President Harris for president.

That came on the heels of more than 230 former officials for Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush announcing their support for Harris as well as ex-campaign staffers for GOP presidential nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Perhaps most notably, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney himself and his daughter ex-Congresswoman Liz Cheney both endorsed Harris this month.

“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,” Dick Cheney wrote in a statement .

When asked about the endorsements of Dick and Liz Cheney last week in Philadelphia, Harris said, “I’m honored to have their endorsement.”

Harris added that both Cheneys were making a courageous statement that “it’s okay, if not important, to put the country above party.”

As a politician with a campaign working on appealing to white moderate Republicans, she can’t light the Cheney name on fire the way some of us feel she should.

Nevertheless, it is hard to hear her say she is “honored” by the endorsement of Dick Cheney, someone we know that helped facilitate the lies that led to the catastrophic war in Iraq and never faced repercussions for it.

I can also think of the long list of sins of all of the Bush/Cheney era and those from other GOP national figures with staffers now boasting of their support of Kamala Harris.

Hurricane Katrina. No Child Left Behind. Clarence Thomas. The war on drugs. Mass incarceration.

Trump is not the only GOP leader to dabble in multiple strains of racism, corruption, deregulation, war and tax cuts for the rich.

There are only a handful of former Republican campaign officials like Stuart Stevens, who, via books like It Was All A Lie , acknowledge how past Republican rhetoric and policies paved the way for Trump.

The rest do not.

Some do, however, release statements in support of Democrats like Kamala Harris. Their support is appreciated, but at the same time, supporting a Democrat over an incompetent fascist is not a virtuous act. And even if it was, it is not one that absolves people of the harm they’ve caused in the past.

Let Harris collect all the GOP votes she can to best Trump, but some of these former Republican officials need to be reminded that outside of the fawning praise from favorable media outlets and praise from Democratic leadership are all the people they helped punish over decades.

Sadly, most of them will never have to truly answer for the damage they helped bring to the country and the most vulnerable Americans, but while that doesn’t make their support any less welcomed, in the future, may it result in less press and public adulation.

Michael Arceneaux is a New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book, “I Finally Bought Some Jordans,” was published in March.

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