Republicans who spoke at Monday’s Democratic National Convention gave bare-bones policy reasons for supporting Joe Biden because, for a conservative, or at least a conservative-leaning voter, there really are no good policy reasons.
“This isn’t about a Republican or Democrat. It’s about a person,” said Christine Whitman, former governor of New Jersey.
“Let me tell you: Donald Trump has no clue how to run a business, let alone an economy,” declared Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, despite the fact that the economy has done really well under Trump by a number of measures. “Joe Biden, on the other hand, has a plan that will strengthen our economy for working people and small-business owners,” she continued, vaguely.
Former New York Rep. Susan Molinari spoke similarly. “I’ve known Donald Trump for most of my political career … so disappointing, and lately so disturbing,” she said, speaking of her work with Biden on women’s issues.
“The stakes in this election are greater than any in modern times,” said former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who was one of Trump’s challengers in the 2016 Republican primary. “He’s unlike all of our best leaders before him,” Kasich said of Trump.
Kasich offered a cursory nod to his policy disagreements with Biden but smiled them off. “That’s OK ’cause that’s America, because whatever our differences, we respect one another as human beings.”
Ultimately, the convention’s Republicans expressed Trump’s flawed and divisive character as their primary motivation for supporting Biden, a wholly legitimate concern that many Republican voters share, to be sure. What they didn’t do, and what they couldn’t do, was make a compelling case that the next four years would be great for business, fiscal sanity, conservative jurisprudence, and religious liberty if Biden were to prevail.
One PBS commentator said after the convention that the night was not a policy night. If that’s true, if the rest of the convention will be devoted to the Democrats’ campaign platform, don’t expect to see any Republicans the rest of the week.
