That's the problem with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney's endorsement of Kamala Harris – News-Herald

Of all the living Republicans who have run for president, only two publicly support Donald Trump: Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential candidate, and JD Vance, Trump's current running mate.

Everyone else goes a different way.

Mike Pence, Trump's two-time running mate and current vice president, refuses to support the man who is still defending the mob that wanted to see him hanged for his contempt of the Constitution.

George W. Bush, the twice-elected Republican president, has said he will not endorse anyone. Former Vice President Dan Quayle has remained silent, and his silence speaks for itself. Mitt Romney, Trump's immediate predecessor as Republican presidential candidate, and his running mate, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, have said they will not vote for Trump.

And Dick Cheney, the former vice president, White House chief of staff, defense secretary and two-term congressman, said last week he would vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

Cheney supported Harris along with his daughter Liz Cheney, once a rising star among Republicans in the House of Representatives.

I have the utmost respect for all of these decisions. (I will never vote for Trump.) But Liz Cheney's path was probably the most heroic because she risked the most – and lost.

Had the former congresswoman chosen to support Trump – or simply retracted her convictions against him after a “respectable” period, as former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and so many others did – she could be Speaker today. But she stood by her convictions and demanded that Trump be held accountable for his disqualifying conduct on and around January 6, 2021. And her political career is over – or at least for as long as Republicans remain in Trump's thrall.

That could change one day. But even if the Republicans wake up from the spell of Trumpism, it would take many twists and turns before her profile as a courageous woman ends with her being plucked from the wilderness to lead the party like a Churchill or de Gaulle.

Still, I don't think her approach is ideal from a strategic perspective. And, as Cheney herself has said, strategy is key. She has repeatedly said she will “do everything in her power” to ensure Trump does not return to the White House.

I have no fundamental objections to this agenda. But I have concerns about her approach, particularly her claim that Harris is essentially a centrist whom conservatives can safely support.

“I think she (Harris) has changed in many important ways on important issues,” Cheney said Sunday on ABC News' “This Week.” “And I … would encourage independent politicians to look at where she stands today on those policy issues.”

I think Cheney should take to heart the unease that comes with supporting Harris. The number of undecided and persuadable voters in the relevant swing states is small. Those who were persuaded by Cheney's well-known arguments about Trump's unfitness for office have probably already changed their minds. How many more voters could be persuaded by her formal support of Harris? Dozens? Hundreds? Maybe.

As silly as I find the argument, many Republicans and conservatives are now convinced that Liz and Dick Cheney are “RINOs” – the childish acronym for “Republican in name only,” secret liberals. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a staunch Trump supporter, said on “This Week” that Liz Cheney “is nothing. I don't mean to be rude, but you can't call yourself a conservative or a Republican if you support the most radical candidate the Democrats have ever put forward.”

Whatever you think of that argument—or of Sanders' authority to decide who is and who isn't a conservative—it resonates with many people, in part because there is a grain of truth in it. Harris' record, especially before the last six weeks, was irrefutably left-leaning.

Why not acknowledge that? If Cheney and other anti-Trump conservatives are already being accused of being born-again leftists, why don't they criticize Harris' progressive policies while saying they'll vote for her anyway because supporting Trump isn't an option for them?

Asking conservatives who don't like Trump – and there are millions of them – to simultaneously overthrow their party's nominee, their party, and their principles is asking too much. What they want is permission to make the best of a bad situation and still be able to identify as conservatives and Republicans.

Cheney recently endorsed Democratic Rep. Colin Allred of Texas in his bid to defeat Sen. Ted Cruz. She has her reasons, including Cruz's defense of Trump's plan to rig the 2020 election. But by giving conservatives and Republicans another reason to believe she's no longer one of them, she undermines efforts to convince them that the former president poses such a unique threat that they should elect a liberal Democrat as president.

It's unlikely that anyone who wanted to vote for Harris would be swayed to vote for Trump just because Liz Cheney says Harris, while frighteningly left-wing, is still the lesser of two evils. But many conservatives might be persuaded by the honesty of the argument that saving the Republican Party, conservatism, and the country justifies voting for a Democrat — and focusing on rebuilding the Republican Party and the conservative movement after Election Day.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and host of the podcast The Remnant. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.