USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: Welcome Kasich to the Democratic convention
These days, there’s no shortage of conservative thought leaders who’ve had it with President Donald Trump.
They include columnist George Will, editor Bill Kristol and Joe Scarborough, a one- time GOP congressman who now lights into Trump from his perch at MSNBC.
There is also Steve Schmidt, the director of Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, and George Conway, a lawyer who once dug up dirt on President Bill Clinton and who is married to Trump aide Kellyanne Conway. The two have joined other Republicans to form The Lincoln Project, a group whose anti- Trump attack ads are so creative that they just might have elevated the genre to an art from.
Now comes word that John Kasich — the former Ohio governor and Republican presidential aspirant — is going to speak at the Democratic National Convention Aug. 17- 20 in Milwaukee in favor of its presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden.
By any measure, it’s an impressive array of firepower arrayed for the benefit of the former vice president.
Yet some Democrats, generally from the liberal wing of the party, don’t want this help. They dismiss The Lincoln Project and other Never- Trump Republican groups as play toys of millionaire and billionaire donors. They actively don’t want Kasich to speak.
One of their arguments is that Republicans such as Kasich will help steer Biden and the Democratic Party in a more centrist direction when they should be making a hard left turn.
There are also more convoluted arguments, such as that these Republicans will earn political chits and amass moral capital, which they will then use to turn on Democrats in the future. It all amounts to a deep distrust among progressives of anyone who doesn’t share their views.
This is, of course, extremely misguided. The Democrats should welcome all the help they can get, especially from Kasich, a respected elder statesman from a battleground state in a battleground region of the country.
Crossover speakers at conventions are, moreover, nothing new:
In 1996, President Ronald Reagan’s first press secretary, James Brady, appeared at the Democratic convention with his wife, Sarah.
In 2004, both political conventions had Democratic keynote speakers. Just over a month after Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, delivered his famous “One America” speech, Zell Miller, a former Democratic governor of Georgia, gave a fiery speech to the GOP convention.
❚ In 2008, when Obama was the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democratic senator and a former vice presidential candidate, spoke at the Republican convention on behalf of his friend, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
This November, the Democrats’ No. 1 job is to restore constitutional rule to this country by ridding it of what Schmidt calls this “illiberal, dishonest, vile, corrupt and galactically incompetent president.” Republicans can help with that.
The Democrats’ second job is to focus not on particular policy matters but on winning big on Nov. 3. They should want to make his enablers in Congress feel something akin to physical pain when they see the election results coming in. And they should want to win so many swing voters and erstwhile Republicans that the GOP will be forced to face the reality that it simply has to change.
These are actually some of the same things principled anti- Trump Republicans want. Together with Democrats of all stripes, they could form a broad coalition of Americans intent on getting their country back.
Kasich, in particular, could make this case. Like Biden, he has developed a deep reservoir of respect by establishing a set of principles of public service and sticking to them. And, like Biden, he appeals to the types of voters who want a fair dose of pragmatism in their politics.
Progressives should welcome Kasich to the Democrats’ convention. In fact, they should welcome all Republicans who want to join in. The larger their coalition, the larger the change they can bring about.