Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney campaign together for the first time

RIPON, Wis. ― Vice President Kamala Harris made an unlikely appearance with an unlikely surrogate, showing how former President Donald Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election have scrambled traditional political alliances.

Appearing alongside former Rep. Liz Cheney, once the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives and the daughter of a man regularly considered one of liberalism’s greatest enemies two decades ago, Harris tore into Trump, calling him an enemy of the Constitution and the rule of law.

“The tragic truth we face in this election for President of the United States is that there is actually an honest question about whether any of the candidates will uphold the oath sworn to the Constitution of the United States ” Harris said.

Cheney, a former Trump supporter who broke with him during the Jan. 6 insurrection and later helped lead the congressional investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, launched similar attacks while praising Harris as a kind of pragmatic Democrat who shouldn’t frighten her fellow conservatives.

“In this election, putting patriotism before partisanship is not an aspiration, it is our duty,” Cheney said. “Our survival as a republic depends on a peaceful transition of power. »

The joint appearance with Cheney is the Harris campaign’s highest-profile effort since the Democratic National Convention to reach out to Republicans, a tactic the campaign is hoping for. can convince voters to view the race as a referendum on democracy or collapse – but which Republicans denigrated as irrelevant.

“Our nation is not a prize to be won,” Harris said. “In the face of those who would endanger our magnificent experiment, people of all parties must unite. »

The location of their appearance was more symbolic than practical: Ripon, located about 90 miles northwest of Milwaukee, is widely considered the birthplace of the Republican Party in 1854, with a one-room schoolhouse in the town hosting several key meetings leading to the formation of the party. The county surrounding it, Fond du Lac, has been a GOP stronghold for decades, and Harris is unlikely to make significant gains there.

“It was founded at a meeting in 1854 at the little white school, and it was founded by people opposed to slavery,” Cheney said. “It was this Republican Party, the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower, the party of Reagan and Bush. This is the party I have belonged to all my life.

There was a certain awkwardness in Cheney’s appearance. As the crowd of about 1,600 Harris supporters greeted her with chants of “Thank you, Liz!” ” causing Cheney to briefly appear in tears, their applause when she describes herself as a “Reagan conservative,” highlighting her long history of voting and working for GOP presidents — from Gerald Ford in 1976 to Trump more than four decades later late, and her friendship with conservative commentator Charles Krauthmamer was best described as superficial and polite.

But his criticism of Trump — “I was a Republican before Donald Trump got into spray tan” — drew more applause, as did an attack on former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, still a villain among state Democrats for his role in fighting Wisconsin’s government. union legislation more than ten years ago.

She ended her speech with a call to her fellow Republicans: “I ask you to stay true to the truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump. And instead I’m asking you to help us elect Kamala Harris to the presidency.

The campaign supported the event with the launch of Republican chapters for Harris in Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan, and scheduled events featuring former Rep. Adam Kinzinger in Nevada on Friday and former Trump aide Stephanie Grisham in Arizona on Saturday. The Wisconsin group is led by a sitting district attorney, while former Rep. David Trott is leading the Michigan effort.

Harris’ campaign also released a new ad featuring a Republican voter from Pennsylvania endorsing her as the best choice for middle-class voters.

“I’m a Republican. I voted for Donald Trump and went to his inauguration in 2016. We tried it for four years. It just didn’t work,” voter Matt McCaffery says in one of two ads released by the campaign. “All these billionaires are coming out of their depth to support Trump – well, no shit. They want their tax cuts to come at the expense of the middle class.”

The Trump campaign responded to the appearance by noting Cheney’s attacks on Harris from when the former GOP representative was still supporting Trump in 2019 and now-President Joe Biden chose Harris as his running mate.

Harris “has a more liberal voting record than Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren,” Cheney wrote on social media at the time.

In what appears to be a brief interview with Fox News, Trump himself downplayed the appearance of a woman whose support he bragged about. “Liz Cheney is a stupid war hawk. All she wants to do is shoot missiles at people,” he said. “I think they got hurt. I think they are both so bad.

As expected, Harris was a bit friendlier to Cheney.

“She was an extraordinary national leader and served with great honor,” Harris said. “It is a deep honor for me to have your support.”

At the same time, Harris seemed almost eager to return to a time when she and Cheney no longer had to stand arm in arm.

“We are going to return to a healthy two-party system,” the Democratic presidential candidate said. “I’m sure of it.”