In normal times, former Vice President Mike Pence would have been considered an obvious Republican presidential candidate. The mere fact of having been a successful vice president — and, prior to that, the governor who delivered the largest tax cut in Indiana’s history — would have been enough to ensure he was at least given a decent hearing.
But these are not normal times, and the diligent, polite, born-again Christian struggled to get above 4% in the primary polls. Last month, “after much prayer” (a phrase overused by politicians but, on this occasion, almost certainly true), he withdrew from the race that former President Donald Trump has dominated with his customary defiance of gravity.
DEMOCRATS' HOLLOWED-OUT CENTER
I wish I could write that Pence was paying the price for having stuck to Trump for too long. I remain convinced that, had the Republicans removed Trump before November 2020, Pence would have trounced Joe Biden, and the GOP would now hold both houses.
But the opposite is true. Pence is being punished, not for sticking to Trump, but for sticking to the Constitution. The Hoosier’s sense of loyalty led him to defend acts of meanness, cruelty, and stupidity from his president, but he was not prepared, with a baying mob in the Capitol, to betray American democracy.
Shortly before pulling out, Pence gave a pithy summary of what was at stake for the GOP: “Today, a populist movement is rising in the Republican Party. This growing faction would substitute our faith in limited government and traditional values for an agenda stitched together by little else than personal grievances and performative outrage.”
Perfectly put. Except that that “growing faction” has, like a cuckoo, squeezed every other chick from the nest. The latest poll shows Trump at 55%, with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley at 8% each, Vivek Ramaswamy at 7%, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 3%. It’s over, and Republican voters know it. Seventy-six percent of them want to end the debates and get on with the presidential election.
Trump responded to Pence’s withdrawal with his usual needy egoism. “People are leaving now, and they’re all endorsing me,” he told a crowd in Las Vegas. “I don’t know about Mike Pence. He should endorse me.” For reasons that continue to mystify me, this kind of wheedling does nothing to put off Trump’s working-class base, most of whom would be horrified if their children talked as he did.
It is true that, for all his personal flaws, Trump did achieve some things in his first term. But it is striking how many of these achievements were due, not to some personal magic of his, but to the mainstream Republicans against whom he railed — Pence among them. It was the vice president who immersed himself in the details of the judicial nominations. It was the vice president who, when Trump wobbled on whether to move the embassy to Jerusalem, convinced him to overrule the State Department.
What does it say about the Republican Party that a man like Pence, who did not allow himself so much as a quirked eyebrow when Trump made national policy based on whether people said nice things about him, who stuck to his boss through thick and thin, balking only when Trump attempted an actual coup — that such a man should find himself excommunicated simply for sticking to his oath of office?
I’m afraid there is no getting away from it. A conservative movement that used to value restraint, decency, and civility now rewards foul-mouthed aggression. A party that used to care about the balance of power now cheerfully accepts its role as an adjunct to a whimsical strongman. The values that used to define the Right — low spending, global engagement, small government, free trade, and personal responsibility — have been junked without any real debate. The congressmen who believed in those things have either fallen silent, changed their minds, or quit.
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Maybe it was the madness of social media. Maybe it was years of Russian interference aimed at delegitimizing the news and unsettling politics. Or maybe the Republican base was always more protectionist and cruder than we thought.
Whatever the explanation, we will look back nostalgically on the era when someone like Pence would have been considered a rightist challenger, not exactly establishment, but not beyond the fringe, either. We will pine for the time when believing in God, for all that it upset leftists, also meant trying to hold yourself to the standards of your faith. Those days are gone now. America is colder in consequence.
The party of Mike Pence is long dead
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06.11.2023
In normal times, former Vice President Mike Pence would have been considered an obvious Republican presidential candidate. The mere fact of having been a successful vice president — and, prior to that, the governor who delivered the largest tax cut in Indiana’s history — would have been enough to ensure he was at least given a decent hearing.
But these are not normal times, and the diligent, polite, born-again Christian struggled to get above 4% in the primary polls. Last month, “after much prayer” (a phrase overused by politicians but, on this occasion, almost certainly true), he withdrew from the race that former President Donald Trump has dominated with his customary defiance of gravity.
DEMOCRATS' HOLLOWED-OUT CENTER
I wish I could write that Pence was paying the price for having stuck to Trump for too long. I remain convinced that, had the Republicans removed Trump before November 2020, Pence would have trounced Joe Biden, and the GOP would now hold both houses.
But the opposite is true. Pence is being punished, not for sticking to Trump, but for sticking to the Constitution. The........
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