How Liz Cheney tried to give GOP women permission to vote for Harris

CNN
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Republican women can vote for Kamala Harris — and they don't have to tell anyone.

That was the most striking takeaway from Liz Cheney's Blue Wall swing state tour with the vice president on Monday, as the conservative and former congresswoman created a personal empowerment permission structure for suburban Republican and independent women to snub Donald Trump and to support the Democrats candidate.

The mother of five, who as a lawmaker was strongly anti-abortion and killed Roe v. Wade cheered, also warning that women would not receive necessary reproductive health care following the Supreme Court's momentous 2022 decision, and said that only Harris had been given the compassion to deal with the issue.

Cheney repeatedly made it clear that she still opposes abortion, but said in Waukesha County, a swing county just outside of Milwaukee, “I was very disturbed, deeply disturbed by what I saw in so many states.” She added: “I am disturbed by the extent to which there are women who, as the vice president said, have died in some cases and cannot receive the medical treatment they need because providers are afraid of criminal liability .”

She added: “Today we are faced with a situation that I believe is untenable.”

Cheney spoke with Harris at her third event of the day, which included previous stops in Pennsylvania and Michigan and where she often made more far-reaching arguments against the Republican nominee than the vice president herself.

Earlier, in a Detroit suburb, Cheney suggested that some Republicans feared reprisals and even violence if they spoke out against Trump. “I just want to remind people that if they are at all concerned, they can vote according to their conscience and never have to say a word to anyone,” Cheney said while sitting side by side with Harris. “There will be millions of Republicans doing this on November 5th.”

Cheney was once on the fast track to the top of the Republican Party. However, she was ousted as leader of the House GOP conference for condemning her party for covering up for Trump in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. A pro-Trump challenger then took her seat in Wyoming in a 2022 primary.

But her appearance alongside Harris shows that she has not abandoned her principled politics just because she lost power. It also points to one of the most critical factors in the final days of the general election campaign – whether the Democratic vice president can win over significant numbers of Republicans.

The Harris campaign appeals to Republican voters dissatisfied with Trump's wild and vulgar behavior, his perceived threat to the Constitution and his tendency to cozy up to tyrants in ways that appalled the hawks of the Bush and Reagan administrations – including also Cheney's father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Some of those voters could be among the tens of thousands of Republicans who voted for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in her failed primary against Trump earlier this year. Trump has hinted in recent days that he may appear with his former rival to try to appeal to the same voters. But even if Harris manages to win over a small portion of those voters or convince them not to support Trump, it could be crucial in swing states with razor-thin margins.

But she can't do it alone. Such voters must be approached carefully, as it asks dissident Republican voters to shelve some of their most valued policy positions. That's why Cheney could be so valuable to Harris. She enjoys considerable credibility with some voters because of her untamed conservative ideology and her defense of what she sees as America's most fundamental principles.

“I am a conservative. And I know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is fidelity to the Constitution,” Cheney — the vice chairman of the House special committee that investigated Jan. 6 — said in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. “You have to choose in this race between someone who has remained loyal to the Constitution, who will remain loyal to it, and Donald Trump, whose behavior is not just predicted by us. We saw what he did after the last election. We watched what he did on January 6th,” Cheney warned.

Cheney's concerns about the Constitution were widely known. More notable were her comments about the consequences of the Supreme Court striking down the federal constitutional right to abortion — with a conservative majority built by Trump.

She does not reject her lifelong opposition to abortion. But Cheney cited what she said were discussions about the Texas attorney general's lawsuit over women's medical records. She also appeared to rebuke conservative parliaments and officials whose tough measures have led to the withdrawal of vital health services. In some cases, women were excluded from emergency abortions or other vital reproductive procedures when their lives were in danger. Democrats also moved to halt IVF treatments in Alabama earlier this year after the state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are human beings and that those who destroy them could be liable for wrongful death. The state's Republican governor later signed a law protecting IVF patients, but Democrats cite the case to highlight the chaos and lost rights that they blame squarely on Trump.

Cheney, knowing her days-long remarks would cause a stir, was willing to weigh in on the issue. In Pennsylvania, for example, she intervened in the discussion after Harris raised the issue. And she spoke after the vice president promised to sign legislation restoring nationwide abortion rights if she is president and Congress passes it.

Cheney's vote on the issue was a clear sign that the Harris campaign believes her value to the vice president goes far beyond highlighting Trump's autocratic instincts and threat to democracy. Cheney may have become a bridge to millions of Republican women, particularly in critical swing-state suburbs, who, while strongly opposed to abortion, do not support measures that could endanger their health.

Cheney's appearances with Harris came as the vice president seeks to further widen the former president's massive gender gap among female voters. A New York Times/Siena College poll this month showed Harris leading Trump among female voters 56% to 40%. Among men, the number of Republican candidates increased by 53% to 42%.

The former president found it difficult to discuss abortion and effectively address women during this election campaign. He seeks recognition for the Supreme Court's momentous ruling while trying to avoid its political consequences. He falsely claimed that all women were happy with the decision. He was boastfully promised to act as her “protector” if he won back the White House, and bizarrely claimed he was the “father” of IVF at an all-female town hall last week.

Harris' events with Cheney raised questions about how many Republican voters she might reach. The New York Times poll found that 9% of likely Republicans planned to vote for her and only 3% of Democrats expected to vote for Trump. If that happens in the November election, it would pose a significant challenge to Trump's chances. Still, given the polarization of the country, there are still real doubts that large numbers of Republicans or even conservative-leaning independents will turn to the Democratic nominee.

But the Trump campaign appears to be aware of the risks. The former president said Sunday in Philadelphia that Haley wanted to “accompany” him on the campaign trail. And CNN reported last week that the campaign had been negotiating with the former South Carolina governor for a first appearance with Trump, who has held events specifically for female voters in recent weeks, including with his former White House press secretary, the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

With his wild antics and vulgar comments about the anatomy of the late golfer Arnold Palmer, Trump may not have improved his deficit with female voters or disaffected Republicans over the weekend, although such heavy-handed politics could bolster his authenticity with many of his loyal base voters.

“When you're talking about the kind of Republicans who find Trump's influence on the party harmful, you look at that and think, 'Look, I can't vote for this guy.' “I can’t do this,” Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson told Kasie Hunt on “CNN This Morning” Monday. “But at the same time, is there anyone who has no interest in politics at all but finds these clips from their life behind it somehow funny? They really exist and are part of Trump’s coalition.”

Trump's team also sought to exploit another aspect of his appeal in its efforts to discredit Cheney. The former president noted that her father was an architect of the Bush administration's Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which led to great fatigue with foreign intervention and paved the way for his own political rise.

“Dick Cheney, along with his daughter, is an irrelevant RINO,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding Harris to a triumvirate that he said supported “endless senseless wars” that wasted lives and cost trillions of dollars.

Ultimately, the Cheneys' exclusion from the Trump-era GOP points to the ex-president's extraordinary transformation of the party. And only one side of the Republican Party's family divide will be happy after the election.