More than 200 Republican aides who have worked for the late former President George H.W. Bush, former President George W. Bush, the late Arizona Sen. John McCain and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney have announced that they are endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

The unity of the Republican Party has been put to the test as a total of 238 signatories, including former aides of those four Republican presidential nominees, sent out an open letter endorsing Harris for president on Monday.

The joint statements of support comes a week after Vice President Kamala Harris have formally accepted her party’s nomination on the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Though the four-day convention was meant to celebrate a sense of pride and unity among Democrats, it also stood as a stage for a handful of Republicans.

Some who have previously worked for former president Donald Trump delivered their own speeches criticizing the GOP for abandoning the basic principles of conservatism that stood as the backbone of the party in favor of supporting Trump’s demagogue-like personality and leadership.

In this open letter, now joined by five former aides to George H.W. Bush, the group wrote that they are voting for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, despite “honest, ideological disagreements.”

“We reunite today, joined by new George H.W. Bush alumni, to reinforce our 2020 statements and, for the first time, jointly declare that we’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz this November,” the group wrote.

“Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”

The alternative is none other than Donald Trump, whose “chaotic” leadership they said will present a threat to democracy and “hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions.”

The letter was also critical of Trump’s stance in foreign policy, warning that the former president and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, could jeopardize national security and democratic movements abroad because of their affinity to “kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin

This was not the first time that the group of Republicans had endorsed a Democratic presidential nominee.

Hundreds of former aides to Bush, McCain, and Romney, have similarily endorsed Joe Biden for president in the 2020 election.

The immense amount of animosity between the base of McCain and Romney – both of whom are moderate, establishment Republicans – and that of Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement are as clear as day.

Trump once decried McCain – revered as a self-proclaimed “maverick” known for reaching across party lines in Congress – as a “loser” and “not a war hero” because he spent over five years in captivity as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.

“He lost, so I never liked him as much after that, cause I don’t like losers,” Trump said at a Iowa forum in 2015. “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

Romney, who announced last year that he won’t be seeking re-election as senator, was one of seven Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol in an effort to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

Romney was also the only Republican to have voted to convict Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of justice in his first impeachment trial back in 2020.

In 2016, the Utah senator slammed Trump as a “phony” and a “con artist,” to which Trump responded by calling his 2012 run as “one of the worst campaigns in the history of politics.”

While George W. Bush did not deliver any sharp criticism on the Republican nominee, he skipped the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Bush had also attended Trump’s defiant and anti-establishment inauguration speech in 2016, where the 45th president infamously promised to end “American carnage” and to put “America First.”

It was reported that Bush, whose younger brother Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has been on the receiving end of Trump’s personal insults during the GOP’s primary season, thought that Trump’s inauguration speech was “some weird shit.”

This open letter’s renewed support for the Democratic ticket reflects alarming concerns for the fragmentation of the GOP after Trump’s entrance in the political stage in 2016.

It also reflects moderate Republicans and conservative independents’ opposition to Trump, whose demagoguery and political rhetoric they believe is a threat to the norms of democracy and the Constitution.

The group also wrote that those groups in key swing states are the dominant voting bloc that “ultimately delivered the presidency to Joe Biden.”

Biden had even gained 52 percent over Trump among independents and those affiliated with other parties in the 2020 election, according to the Pew Research Center.

“We’re heartfully calling on these friends, colleagues, neighbors, and family members to take a brave stand once more, to vote for leaders that will strive for consensus, not chaos; that will work to unite, not divide; that will make our country and our children proud,” the group wrote.

Among those who signed the letter in support of Harris and Walz include Jean Becker, George H.W. Bush’s former chief of staff; Lisa Boepple, Sen. McCain’s former legislative director; David Nierenberg, Romney’s 2012 campaign finance chair; and Jim Swift, a former Republican National Committee field staffer and now a senior editor of The Bulwark Podcast.