Leubsdorf: A rock and a hard place

Unfortunately, however, Cheney and her fellow Harris backers represent a minority. Most of Trump’s most prominent GOP critics — many of whom have repeatedly warned against his return to office — have refused to take their opposition to the point where it would count the most, by backing the Democratic ticket.

Their excuses range from maintaining their influence in what they hope will soon be a post-Trump GOP to ideological disagreement with the Democrats. But their failure to go the last mile and actually support Harris could weaken their anti-Trump stance by denying their votes and voices to the only candidate who can defeat him.

The list includes some of the biggest names in the GOP: former President George W. Bush, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, former Vice President Mike Pence, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, former GOP presidential candidate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton.

On the other hand, Harris does have the support of such high-ranking GOP luminaries as former Vice President Dick Cheney; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; and former GOP Reps. Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Denver Riggleman and Joe Walsh.

But none currently holds office. Neither do others actively campaigning for her, such as former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and former White House aides Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews.

Trump’s influence within the party is such that few current Republican officeholders have refused to endorse him, and most won’t say for whom they are voting.

“Having been the former nominee of the Republican Party, I want to make sure that I’m in a position after this election to have some influence on the direction of our party in the future,” Romney said. “So I’m not going to go out and do something that would make that more difficult to occur.”

Pence, Ryan and Bolton said they oppose Trump but won’t vote for a Democratic nominee with whom they disagree ideologically.

“I could never vote for Kamala Harris, I could never vote for Tim Walz,” Pence said in August. “I’m a Republican.”

But he told Fox News last spring, “I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump” because he “is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years.”

Bolton, who has repeatedly warned that a reelected Trump might withdraw the United States from NATO and jeopardize other American overseas commitments, says, “I am not going to vote for either Harris or Trump. Neither one are qualified to be president.” He said he would cast a protest vote for “a conservative Republican.” Initially, he said it might be Cheney, but when the former vice president endorsed Harris, he said he might write in former President Ronald Reagan.

Bush, the only other living former Republican president, declined to say what he would do, though he didn’t vote for Trump in either 2016 or 2020. “President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago,” his office told NBC News. In 2020, Bush said he wrote in his former secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. In 2016, Bush and his wife voted for “none of the above,” spokesman Freddy Ford said.

James Baker, a former secretary of state, told biographers Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in 2016 that he was voting, albeit reluctantly, for Trump. “I’m a conservative,” he explained, adding he’d rather have a conservative in the White House than a liberal, “even if he’s crazy.”