Conservatives should have no difficulty voting for Harris

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Among the roster of speakers at this year’s Democratic National Convention are several representatives of a demographic group not traditionally considered part of the Democratic coalition: Republicans.

They include former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, former Lieutenant-Governor of Georgia Geoff Duncan, and former White House officials Stephanie Grisham and Olivia Troye. But the list of prominent conservatives and Republicans to have endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is a lot longer.

In most cases this is explicable less as support for Ms. Harris or her policies than opposition to Mr. Trump. These are “country first” Republicans, who have correctly understood the need to set aside their differences with the Democrats in the face of the clear and present danger that Mr. Trump presents.

But the decision to cross party lines will have been made easier for these conservatives by two things. One, Mr. Trump is not remotely conservative. And two, Ms. Harris, while liberal in many of her views, has made several overtures to conservatives, ideologically and thematically.

That Mr. Trump is not a conservative will be clear to anyone who does not equate conservatism with “annoying liberals” or “behaving like a jerk.” Look up virtually any traditional definition of conservatism. Support for free trade and free markets? Mr. Trump is a fervent protectionist and adamant, if whimsical, interventionist. Fiscal responsibility? He added US$8-trillion to the national debt.

Strong national defence? He can scarcely contain his contempt for veterans, would wreck NATO and has an adolescent crush on the world’s most brutal dictators, from Vladimir Putin (“very smart”) to Xi Jinping (“a great leader”) to Kim Jong Un (“we fell in love”).

Tough on crime? He is a career criminal, convicted on 34 counts and facing trial on dozens more. Reverence for the country’s institutions and its history? He has called for the Constitution’s “termination,” and seems uncertain about Lincoln’s accomplishments, among a long list.

Neither does Mr. Trump display any of the qualities of character that have traditionally been important to conservatives. Again, go down the list: restraint, modesty, self-reliance, fidelity, thrift, honesty, courage, faith, to say nothing of the more “liberal” virtues of compassion, tolerance and understanding.

Those who supported the Republicans in the past because they stood for conservative principles – as opposed to those whose principles are whatever the Republicans stand for at the moment – will find, therefore, no great difficulty in voting for Ms. Harris. If anything, as an anti-tariff, pro-NATO career prosecutor, she is the more conservative of the two candidates – or at least the less unconservative.

That she is a political liberal is not in doubt, even if the attempts to paint her as a dangerous radical are overdrawn. Ms. Harris’s clumsy efforts to position herself to the left in the 2020 Democratic primaries, searching for a lane in a crowded field – between the Amy Klobuchar-Michael Bloomberg moderates and the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren radicals – seem more the exception than the rule.

That she has since rowed back some of these positions will offend those whose first requirement of a leader is that she should never change her mind. But Ms. Harris’s shift to the right comes at a time when the public has been moving left on many fronts: abortion, gay rights, the environment. She will be “close enough” for many voters, including many conservatives.

In any case, most voters are not particularly ideological. Ms. Harris may be to the left of the median voter, but in temperament and tone she gives off a reassuringly middle-of-the-road vibe. She has been at pains, what is more, to sew conservative notes into her stump speech.

The overarching theme, you’ll notice, is “freedom,” that most Republican of rallying cries, not “fairness” or “equality” – even if “freedom” is here invoked in defence of more traditionally liberal concerns like the right to abortion, rather than the right to bear arms.

The frequent approving references to a society in which people can “get ahead” and “build wealth” seem oddly aspirational, even capitalist, coming from a supposed socialist. She’d raise the corporate tax rate to 28 per cent? That’s six points less than it was after Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts.

Then there is the choice of Tim Walz as her running mate. The pundit class will be interested in his record as a congressman (moderate) and as a Governor (liberal). But the average voter may be more interested in his record as a father, football coach, hunter and veteran – all touchstones of cultural conservatism.

Add in his aw-shucks Midwestern agreeableness, and her sunny invocation of “the promise of America,” and it all sounds vaguely … Reaganite. Can it be that the Democrats have seized the mantle of freedom, optimism and patriotism? Or did the Republicans just throw them all away?