On Wednesday, former Vice President Mike Pence urged his party to reject the rising populism of his former boss, Donald Trump, and “his imitators.”
Pence said in a lecture at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics that “Republican voters face a choice” between traditionalist values and the growing populist current inside the party.
Pence’s most pointed criticism yet of Trump’s faction within the Republican Party was that its supporters were abandoning small government and traditional principles in favour of “an agenda stitched together by little else than personal grievances and performative outrage.”
Pence’s address is part of his campaign for the 2024 presidential nomination of the party he once served with in the White House, which has undergone significant transformation since he left. Pence used his speech to try and put some distance between himself and his previous past, which has been holding him back from running for president.
Donald Trump made conservative policies a central plank of his 2016 presidential campaign. And we did that together,” Pence proclaimed in his New Hampshire address. But Republicans should be aware that he and his imitators in this Republican race are making no such pledge at this time.
The former vice president claimed that Trump was ignoring a looming US debt problem and that he often sounds “like an echo” of President Joe Biden.
During his speech, Pence lambasted the other Republican presidential candidates. The Florida governor’s battle with Disney was cited as an example of how “using the power of the state to punish a corporation for taking a political stand that he disagreed with” is justified. He also called the popular IT entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy one of Trump’s “populist protégés.” Ramaswamy’s popularity has increased in recent weeks.
Pence claimed in his speech that populism and conservatism were competing ideas for the future of the GOP, and that Republicans in 2024 must reject the “siren song of populism” to remain a party of the Constitution.
He was referring to Donald Trump’s grand debut into the 2016 presidential election at Trump Tower in New York City that June. “The truth is the Republican Party did not begin on a golden escalator in 2015,” he added.
Pence’s speech was titled “Populism vs. Conservatism: Republicans’ Time for Choosing,” a reference to Ronald Reagan’s seminal 1964 speech endorsing Barry Goldwater for president. Pence has said that the late conservative president was the driving force behind his decision to leave the Democratic Party when he was a young man, and he has modelled himself after the Great Communicator. Later this month, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California will host the second Republican presidential debate.
While Pence has discussed similar topics in the past, his advisers said on a call with reporters on Tuesday before his address that the title of his speech reflects the “inflection point” for the GOP. They warned that if the party nominates a presidential candidate who espouses “unprincipled” populist ideas, it could cost Republicans the White House and affect down-ballot races. Pence made the case in his address that the gap between conservatism and populism was “unbridgeable,” forcing Republicans to pick between limited government and the Constitution.
It would be “much too small an interpretation” of Pence’s statement, according to his advisors, to assume that his comments were directed solely at Trump or Ramaswamy, with whom he sparred during the first GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee over political experience and their respective visions for the country.
Pence, 64, and Ramaswamy, 38, exchanged heated words during the discussion, highlighting a generational and ideological chasm inside the party. Pence has continued to attack Ramaswamy since the debate, this time during campaign events in New Hampshire. He has focused on Ramaswamy’s isolationist “America First 2.0” foreign policy platform.
Pence’s advisors referenced South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in advance of the address, calling them “traditional conservatives positioning themselves as populists.”
On Tuesday, a Pence aide told reporters, “Which might be even more dangerous, because it seems like it’s pandering.”
When asked how they explain Pence’s anti-populist message given after serving with Trump, who ushered in a new era of populism, the advisors responded that Trump governed like a conservative, and that having Pence as his vice president helped him drive the administration in that direction. Pence’s advisors have said that Trump is “not running as a conservative” now that he has been indicted on federal charges for trying to overturn his 2020 loss and has forced his vice president to reject the results of the election.
Pence said on Wednesday that if populists continue down their current path, “our party’s relevancy will be confined to the history books.”
In a cruel twist, he predicted that the party would continue to exist in some populist form but would be purely Republican in name.
Those close to Pence say he prepared for the speech with the knowledge that populism is gaining traction “not just in this race for president, but also in the halls of Congress and in some of the flagship institutions of our conservative movement.”
Pence’s advisors insisted that a speech on conservative principles wouldn’t come too late, despite the fact that the most recent AWN poll showing Trump with a commanding lead over the rest of the Republican field.
There is a “important battle right now going on over the future of our party and, frankly, the future of our nation,” they argued.
