DON'T EXPECT ANY BIG NAMES TO JOIN REPUBLICANS FOR HARRIS

It's good that this exists, but it could be a lot more useful:

The group known as Republicans for Biden is officially relaunching Sunday as Republicans for Harris....

In an election that is once again looking tight, the Harris campaign is hoping that Republicans repelled by Trump and independent moderates can help make a difference for the vice president in critical states.....

On Monday, the new group will hold kick-off events in Arizona, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.... Already signing on as supporters: former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld (the 2016 Libertarian nominee for vice president who then challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican primary), former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman, [former Illinois congressman Adam] Kinzinger, former Virginia Rep. Denver Riggelman, former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh (who also challenged Trump in the 2020 primary) and former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

Not participating: George W. Bush, Liz Cheney, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, or Mike Pence, to name five of the most prominent GOP figures who've publicly declared opposition to Donald Trump, or at least skepticism. I don't blame Harris for landing any of these people. I blame the Republicans themselves, who prefer empty gestures to publicly declaring support for the one person who could actually beat Trump.

Bush wasted a vote on Condoleezza Rice in 2020 and declared late last year that in November he might vote for his dog:

Former President George W. Bush intends to vote in the 2024 presidential election, but he might write in the name of his brother, Jeb Bush — or his late Scottish terrier, Barney.

Though joking, Bush echoed a concern many Americans cite about two of the prospective candidates: their age.

“I predict that most Americans think we’re too damn old at the top,” Bush ... said. “I’m too old to be president. I know what it takes to be president, and I’m younger than Biden and Trump.”

Bush is about four years younger than current President Joe Biden and about one month younger than former President Donald Trump.

Kamala Harris is eighteen years younger than Bush. But Bush undoubtedly would like his nephew George P. Bush to remain politically viable in Texas, so he won't do the right thing and publicly endorse Harris.

Liz Cheney wants to remain a potential Republican candidate, possibly in Virginia, where she grew up and now works, so I assume she won't endorse Harris. Collins has said she plans to waste her vote by writing in Nikki Haley's name in November. Romney has said that he wasted his vote in 2016 and 2020 by writing in his wife; I assume he'll do the same this year, even though he's retiring from the Senate and is in his late seventies. And Pence says he might vote for the guy who almost got him killed.

I assume Harris won't put too many resources into this effort, and she shouldn't. The cowardice of Trump's intraparty critics ensures that this group will be of only limited utility. They also might assume that prominent defectors from Trump will make their party look weak. If so, they're literally putting party over country -- as you'd expect.