Given everything we know about the terrible things Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party and the conservative movement, you’d figure Joe Biden could count on some high-profile defections to his banner in 2024. He did, after all, get a decent number of Republican endorsements in 2020; on the first evening of the Democratic convention in Milwaukee, four of them spoke: former Ohio governor John Kasich, former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman, former New York congresswoman Susan Molinari, and former California gubernatorial nominee and business executive Meg Whitman. And there are obviously a lot of Republican or ex-Republican voices shouting down Trump; you can find a lot of them at the Bulwark any given day.
But even in 2020, it was noteworthy how very former the most prominent Republicans for Biden were. The two (unrelated) Whitmans were last on a ballot for elected office in 2010 (Meg) and 1997 (Christine). Then and now, actual Republican officeholders, whatever their opinion of the 45th president, have almost entirely put on the party harness or at least kept their mouths shut. But even among ex-officeholders, new recruits to the Republicans-for-Biden camp this year are few and far between, as NBC News recently reported:
Allies of President Joe Biden are ramping up a charm offensive aimed at getting high-profile Republicans and donors who won’t support Donald Trump to back the Democratic president.
But the task is proving difficult, according to people familiar with the efforts.
As of Thursday [April 4], Biden had not yet secured any endorsements from nationally recognized Republican Party officials.
NBC reports Team Biden is hoping against hope that two high-profile 2024 Trump rivals will eventually climb onboard the incumbent’s bandwagon: Chris Christie and Nikki Haley. I’d say the former is a very long shot (thanks to his many nasty comments about Biden) and the latter is a fantasy (because she is far from ruling out a future in the GOP). The White House can probably count on a formal nod from Liz Cheney at some point between now and November. But given her role on the January 6 Committee, and her rather forceful defenestration by Wyoming Republicans in a 2022 primary, Cheney wouldn’t much count as a defection.
At this point, Joe Biden’s prize convert among active Republicans is former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, who endorsed the president in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s op-ed published Monday:
[T]he GOP will never rebuild until we move on from the Trump era, leaving conservative (but not angry) Republicans like me no choice but to pull the lever for Biden …
The alternative is another term of Trump, a man who has disqualified himself through his conduct and his character. The headlines are ablaze with his hush-money trial over allegations of improper record-keeping for payments to conceal an affair with an adult-film star.
Most important, Trump fanned the flames of unfounded conspiracy theories that led to the horrific events of Jan. 6, 2021. He refuses to admit he lost the last election and has hinted he might do so again after the next one.
If you aren’t from Georgia but Duncan’s name rings a bell, it’s probably because he was the last cookie on the plate for the nonpartisan organization No Labels before it gave up on running a presidential ticket this year. When even Duncan ultimately said “no” to No Labels, it was a pretty sure sign it just wasn’t going to be its year.
Duncan, as it happens, was one of several prominent Georgia Republicans who favored certification of Biden’s victory in the state in 2020 and then called out Trump’s efforts to overturn the results. Unlike Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, however, Duncan didn’t follow through by fighting the vengeful attempted MAGA takeover of the GOP in 2022. Instead, he dropped his reelection bid and let Trump ally (and false elector) Burt Jones have the state’s No. 2 position, even as Kemp and Raffensperger defeated Trump’s surrogates handily in a Republican primary.
Interestingly, Duncan didn’t call out Kemp (who had endorsed Trump’s 2024 reelection bid) and Raffensperger (who seems to be trying to mend fences with the 45th president) in criticizing Republicans who are “holding their noses and falling behind Trump”; he scolds by name such conveniently out-of-state GOP-ers as Mitch McConnell, Chris Sununu, and Bill Barr. Presumably Duncan foresees some sort of Georgia Republican future for himself, which likely motivates this awkward comment that couldn’t have been pleasing to Team Biden: “At the same time [as we support Biden], we should work to elect GOP congressional majorities to block his second-term legislative agenda and provide a check and balance.”
Perhaps the Republican voters that Democratic operatives covet in November won’t need role models from the political class. If they do, they might want a shinier trophy than Geoff Duncan. And Duncan might want to reconsider his belief that the GOP is moving his way.
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