'Choose someone faithful to Constitution': Liz Cheney makes case for Harris to moderate Republicans

Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney has called upon moderate Republicans, particularly women, to vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

Cheney, a longtime Republican hawk, has endorsed Vice President Harris in the 2024 US presidential election. She has joined a growing group of Republicans miffed with Donald Trump who have converged around Harris. She is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was former President George W Bush’s deputy.

Cheney on Monday joined Harris on a tour of battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. She said that the decision to support to Harris should be based on the most fundamental Republican value of respecting the Constitution.

“I’m a conservative and I know that the most conservative of all conservative principles is being faithful to the Constitution. You have to choose in this race between someone who has been faithful to the Constitution, who will be faithful, and Donald Trump, who – it’s not just us predicting how he will act. We watched what he did after the last election. We watched what he did on January 6,” said Cheney.

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Cheney also reached out to Republican women and said that they neither have to explain their vote to anyone nor publicise it if they wish to vote for Harris.

Cheney said, “It’s not about party, it’s about right and wrong. I certainly have many Republicans who will say to me, ‘I can’t be public.’ They do worry about a whole range of things, including violence, but they’ll do the right thing. And I would just remind people, if you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody.”

Cheney, who remains anti-abortion, said at an event in Pennsylvania that the laws against abortion in the aftermath of overruling of the Roe v Wade judgement have gone too far. She said that in places like Texas, the Republican governments are suing to access women’s medical records to track pregnancies and potential abortions and “that’s not sustainable for us as a country”.

Cheney also flagged the cases in which women have died after being denied abortions they needed.

“I have been very troubled, deeply troubled by what I have watched happen in so many states. I have been troubled by the extent to which you have women who, as the vice president said, in some cases, have died, who can’t get medical treatment that they need because providers are worried about criminal liability,” said Cheney in Wisconsin.

Further hitting out Trump, Cheney said, “If you wouldn’t hire somebody to babysit your kids, you shouldn’t make that guy the president of the United States.”

Cheney further said that if conservatives thought that by voting for Trump, they were voting for a traditional Republican, then they need to relook at Trump’s policies.

“For anybody who is a Republican who is thinking that, you know, they might vote for Donald Trump because of national security policy, I ask you, please, please study his national security policy. Not only is it not Republican, it’s dangerous,” said Cheney in Michigan.

A large number of Republicans and conservatives are miffed with Trump over his abusive conduct, sheer disrespect for opponents, and deviation from the traditional Republican and conservative approaches of security and foreign policy, and embrace of isolationism. Cheney also flagged Trump and his Republican loyalists’ “dangerous embrace of tyrants” in a reference of Trump’s fawning approach to authoritarian rulers like Vladimir Putin of Russia.