The Leftovers

It's long past time for Republican dissenters to take the next step and join the Democratic Party

Former US Representative from Wyoming (R) Liz Cheney speaks onstage during the 2024 Martin Luther King, Jr. Beloved Community Commemorative Service at Ebenezer Baptist Church on January 15, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. Cheney endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris for president on September 4, 2024. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)

There is something admirable about lifelong members of the GOP refusing to endorse their party’s nominee when they know he’s thoroughly unfit for the presidency. If, like former House member Liz Cheney and her father former Vice President Dick Cheney, they go further to endorse the Democratic nominee, that’s even more impressive—a forthright expression of devotion to the Constitution over partisanship.

I also understand that it makes sense for these dissenters from pro-Trump Republican orthodoxy to continue calling themselves Republicans for the duration of the current presidential race, since their actions create a permission structure for other members of the party to break from its unacceptable nominee without confronting them with the inevitably more controversial case for ditching the party altogether.

Yet when the 2024 election is finally behind us, these Republican dissenters really ought to do precisely that: ditch the GOP altogether and join the Democratic Party.

There is no place for dissenters in the contemporary Republican Party. That is going to remain true whether or not Donald Trump prevails in November. It’s long past time those who reject the right-populist takeover of the party to cut themselves loose and stop pretending they will have a meaningful say in building its future. They will not. It would be far better for them, and for the Democrats, if they joined the Donkey Party outright and began fortifying the Harris-Walz campaign’s move toward the ideological center-left.

The Failed State That Is the Republican Party