My biggest pet peeve in disaster movies is the sex scene. As soon as a Diane Warren song starts playing in the background, the male and female leads meet eyes and suddenly decide that it’s time for a cuddle. Saving the Planet loses all urgency.
That’s what it feels like to watch Republicans today not support Kamala Harris for optics. They see as well as anyone that former President Trump is a threat to democracy. He says so openly. But when members of the Republican Party consider their chances of staying in power, the romantic music in their heads just seems to carry them away.
Take Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. If anyone knows how far Trump will go to gain power, it’s him. Trump has bullied him since he lost the state to President Biden by 11,779 votes in 2020. We’ve heard Trump’s phone call with Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. We’ve seen the charges (though it’s still uncertain whether the Fulton County District Attorney will be able to pursue the charges). Trump’s allies tried to use fake electors to make it look like he won the state.
MORE: Court mistakenly released sealed documents from search warrant proceedings against US Representative Scott Perry
MORE: Now deter and punish Putin’s habit of hostage-taking
Kemp followed the law and common sense and certified the true electors, giving Biden the state’s 16 electoral votes.
We still hear about Trump’s resentment, most recently in a long rant at a campaign rally in Georgia.
“He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor,” Trump said Saturday about Kemp, who has an approval rating of 63 percent in his state – and whom Trump supported for governor in 2018.
First-hand: If anyone knows the danger Trump poses, it’s Kemp. And yet the governor responded to the latest wave of attacks with a social media post supporting Trump’s campaign: “My focus is on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats – not on petty personal insults, attacks on Republicans, or dwelling on the past.”
That’s how he characterized Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. He’s wallowing in the past. His wife, Marty Kemp, is so worried about what Trump would do if he came back to power that she said she would put her husband’s name forward as a presidential candidate rather than vote for Trump. Oh, great. So much courage.
Kemp is expected to run for Senate, so perhaps his political future is more important to him than the future of the country. He doesn’t want to be seen supporting a Democrat, even if the alternative is a felon whom Kemp personally observed trying to overthrow American democracy.
The public spat between Kemp and Trump prompted Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) to ask the two to work things out, as if there was some kind of acceptable middle ground between democracy and a failed coup.
The political maneuvering of people who used to say “never Trump” – like Graham and Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio – would not be possible without a healthy dose of cowardice.
Harris, like most politicians, will have to answer for positions she has taken in the past and may no longer support. But one position she has not changed is the importance of protecting a free and fair election. On the day of the Jan. 6 attack, Harris’s motorcade came within 20 feet of the pipe bomb that had been planted outside the Democratic National Committee offices the day before. Authorities still do not know who planted that bomb or a similar one found at the Republican National Committee headquarters.
Times like these: These are not ordinary times. Many conservatives know this firsthand. And while they understand the urgency of the situation, they continue to make time to play politics like the romantic leads in an end-of-the-world movie. At least, most of them do.
A new group called Republicans for Harris was formed this week to try to please conservatives by doing everything they can to stop someone who tried to overturn the election from becoming king again. One of the main strategies, of course, is to vote for Trump’s opponent. Many Americans who tend to vote Republican will hesitate.
The Kemps of the world don’t help, but look at the record of Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah). He has wavered at times, but mostly he seems to have recognized Trump for what he is and been brave enough to say so.
During the 2016 primaries, Romney recorded robocalls in support of Marco Rubio and John Kasich, encouraging voters to vote for “a candidate who can defeat Hillary Clinton and make us proud.” After Chris Christie endorsed Trump, Romney reportedly wrote him an email calling Trump “undoubtedly mentally unstable, racist, bigoted, misogynistic, xenophobic, vulgar, and violent.”
In 2018, Romney accepted Trump’s endorsement for the Senate. But in 2021, he voted for impeachment. In a statement, he explained his reasons, saying the former president “attempted to rig the election by pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to falsify the election results in his state” and “incited insurrection against Congress by using the power of his office.”
Romney and Christie are like many Republicans who knew the danger Trump posed before he became president but chose party over country. The members of Republicans for Harris and the half-dozen former Trump Cabinet members who refuse to support him have decided not to make that mistake again. Other politicians like Graham and Kemp don’t care what happens to democracy as long as their careers aren’t over.
— LZ Granderson is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
