Remember the hullabaloo over former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney coming out and endorsing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election?
Then remember the similar hubbub when former Democratic Rep. Peter Deutsch of Florida came out and endorsed GOP nominee and former President Donald Trump on Monday?
If you follow politics, you’ve probably heard about the first event, ad nauseam. In fact, you’ve probably seen countless talking heads who once equated the surname “Cheney” with “Vader” suddenly praise the family as mavericks, which is what liberals always call not-really conservatives who do and say exactly what liberals want to hear and have done.
As for Deutsch — who?
That was basically the reaction after the former representative for Florida’s 20th Congressional District, who represented it in six terms that spanned from 1993 to 2005, became the latest Democrat to endorse Trump’s bid for a second term on Monday.
“I feel very comfortable today publicly announcing that I’m endorsing Donald Trump to be re-elected as president,” Deutsch said on a call put together by the Trump campaign to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’ brutal terrorist attacks on Israel, according to The Hill.
And while he agreed with Trump’s stances on the border crisis and school choice, he said that the situation in the Middle East and elsewhere was the motivating factor in his endorsement.
The “driving force for me to make this decision is what I believe is the most important factor in being president, which is really world peace,” Deutsch said on the call.
“And I think that Kamala Harris and the Harris-Biden administration in terms of what they have done and are doing … make the world a dramatically less safe place,” he added.
Who do you trust to keep the U.S. safe?
Deutsch becomes the second former Democratic representative to back Trump.
The first was former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020.
Despite a cult following who wanted to see her remain independent — especially considering the attacks she saw from the Democratic establishment during and after her campaign — she backed Joe Biden in 2020.
In August, she publicly endorsed Trump at the National Guard Association in Detroit. The former servicewoman said that the tipping point for her was the Biden administration’s handling of war abroad, particularly the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Thirteen U.S. service members and countless others died in an airport bombing in Kabul at that war’s shameful end, something Gabbard mentioned in her endorsement.
“This is personal for me as I know it is for so many of you here. This is real,” she said, referencing her service in Iraq with the Hawaii National Guard.
“Every day we were confronted with that high human cost of war and that sadness as we boarded the plane when we left — that we were leaving some of our brothers and sisters behind,” she said.
Also on the Trump train is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Kennedy heir has never held an elected position, but was a respected environmental activist and lawyer until he began questioning the COVID vaccine — as he has, indeed, questioned almost all vaccines — but when the blind squirrel found something resembling a nut, he became an immediate pariah.
He became more of one when he announced a primary challenge to President Joe Biden, and even more of one when he left to pursue an independent candidacy. He abandoned that to endorse Trump in late summer.
“‘Make America Great Again’ recalls a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with hope and a belief in itself. It was an America that was beginning to confront its darker shadows, could acknowledge the injustice in its past and present, yet at the same time could celebrate its successes,” he said in a social media post.
“It was a nation of broad prosperity, the world’s most vibrant middle class, and [an] idealistic belief (though not consistently applied) in freedom, justice, and democracy. It was a nation that led the world in innovation, productivity, and technology.”
I respect Gabbard; I’m vaguely familiar with Deutsch and his reasons for endorsing Trump are sound, even if he wasn’t exactly the most notable of House members, and RFK Jr. may be a bit of a bounder in the personality department, but he more than occasionally makes a salient point that everyone who occasionally commutes to reality should be forced to acknowledge carries intellectual weight.
As for the Republicans for Harris, such as they are: Liz Cheney is a professional NeverTrumper who thought that being a professional NeverTrumper was her ticket to the Republican nomination after grossly misjudging how deeply affected most Americans were by the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion. After losing her primary bigly, she compared herself to Abraham Lincoln, then set about trying to desperately grasp at relevancy. Her endorsement of Harris is about as surprising as what happens to the titular vessel in the film “Titanic.”
Other Republicans who are backing Harris, as per The Hill, include former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (gotta secure that all-important former Republican lieutenant governor vote) and, uh, people — who weren’t named.
Funnily enough, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s name was not mentioned, presumably at the behest of the Harris campaign — who tried to pretend they warmly welcomed that endorsement, and then collectively took a two-day shower, put on hazmat suits and quarantined themselves like it was March of 2020, lest the novel Vader virus spread.
Which one do you hear more about, though? And which group of counter-endorsers is more substantive? If those questions aren’t rhetorical to you, either your surname is Cheney or you really ought to watch this TV show called “The News” more often.
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