By Phineas Hogan | Cronkite News
CHICAGO – Former President Donald Trump has driven some Republicans out of his party. Democrats have spent the week offering them a new home.
They have toned down progressive language in their platform. At the Democratic National Convention, they have framed Trump as an extremist and deployed disaffected Republicans to encourage others to defect to Vice President Kamala Harris.
“John McCain’s Republican Party is gone,” Mesa Mayor John Giles, who co-chairs the Arizona chapter of Republicans for Harris, said from the convention stage, invoking the late senator known for working across party lines. “Let’s turn the page. Let’s put country first.”
Giles described Harris and the Democratic Party as a refuge for the “politically homeless.”
Like many Republicans, he said before his speech, he disagrees with the vice president on abortion, border policy and lots of other issues, but she’s far more likely than Trump to stay focused on the needs of the nation’s center.
