Former vice president Mike Pence has virtually no chance to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination for many reasons, not the least of which is that he was scapegoated by former president Trump because he refused to set aside the electoral votes that made Biden president. Pence stood up for the Constitution and has been blamed for doing his duty.
Whatever the Trump wing of the Republican Party thinks of him, Pence’s speech last Wednesday should not be ignored because his warning against the Republican drift into populism and isolationism is right on the money. (READ MORE: The Republican Pseudo-Party)
What Pence said in his Wednesday speech was almost, but not entirely, correct. He said that Republicans should reject the “siren song of populism” which is a major feature of Trump’s campaign. He said, “Should the new populism of the right seize and guide our party, the Republican Party we’ve long known will cease to exist and the fate of American freedom would be in doubt.” Pence said that there was an unbridgeable gap between populism and conservatism.
Pence compared the right’s ascendant populism — when “the people” define policy instead of their elected representatives — to the left’s progressivism, calling them “fellow travelers on the same road to ruin,” which is about right. He criticized Trump’s populism and growing isolationism, accusing him of abandoning U.S. allies.
The difference between populism and conservatism is that populism has no guiding principles while conservatism does.
The gap between conservatives and populists is clear but not unbridgeable. Both are highly concerned about our economy.
Pence also said that he and Trump campaigned in 2016 as conservatives and governed that same way. That’s not entirely true.
Trump has always been a populist and, mostly, governed that way. He, like George W. Bush, pretends to be a “big government” conservative, as if there were such a thing. Federal spending increased and government growth continued during the Trump presidency.
The biggest thing Pence was wrong on is his statement that the gap between conservatives and populists is unbridgeable.
Thanks to Trump, the Republican Party now appeals to many more working-class Americans than it did before. The Party has changed demographically, tilting more toward populism and bypassing conservative values. The Party is Trump’s, not Reagan’s. (READ MORE: The Bidenomics Scam)
Pence also accused Trump and his followers of isolationism, which is not entirely off the mark. As president, Trump was definitely not isolationist. The Abraham Accords, under which several Arab states made peace with Israel, is his biggest foreign policy achievement. Trump was entirely right in demanding that our fellow NATO members spend more on their own defense.
Trump is not isolationist but occasionally tilts that way. His followers — and those among the other contestants for the nomination who attempt to mimic him — are more isolationist than he is. Pence would have been more correct to say that the gap between conservatives and isolationists is unbridgeable.
As I explained in a December 2021 column isolationists aren’t conservatives, nor are “neocons” who want to intervene militarily in almost every conflict around the world. Conservatives believe in deterrence, i.e., in Reagan’s terms, “peace through strength.” We believe that deterrence should be calibrated to meet current threats — China, Iran, Russia, and, to a lesser extent, North Korea — and that such deterrence doesn’t include (as it does in Trump’s thinking) flattering and admiring Vladimir Putin as Trump does.
What that doesn’t mean is, as some neocons said last year, spending American blood to defend Ukraine. Nor does that mean we should cut off aid to Ukraine. It does mean, as I’ve written elsewhere, that we need a special inspector general, like the one we had in Afghanistan, to investigate and recommend prosecution of those people diverting our aid to Ukraine for corrupt purposes. Further aid to Ukraine should be contingent on the creation of such an IG.
The gap between conservatives and populists is clear but not unbridgeable. Both are highly concerned about our economy, inflation, and high-interest rates. Both are equally concerned with the high crime rates plaguing most major cities and about our dependence on foreign oil and gas, which is entirely the product of Biden’s war against American energy independence.
Whoever is the Republican nominee in 2024 should hang the slogan that James Carville energized the 1992 Clinton campaign with, “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” over every desk in his campaign headquarters and bash Biden’s economic mess in every speech.
If our 2024 candidate is savvy enough, the Trump populists can be rolled into his (or her) campaign even if the nominee isn’t Trump.
Fourteen months from now we will have a presidential election unique in our history: one that is not a contest between ideologies. Voters will be forced to choose between Trump’s stolen election claims and Biden’s senility and corruption.
The 2024 election should, instead, be a contest between two factions: first, those who want to significantly limit the powers of government, punish crime, and strengthen our economy, our military, and our standing in the world; and second, those who want to continue the ruination that the Biden crew has imposed on us. But it won’t be.
If, as we must expect, Trump is the nominee there’s a slim possibility he could be wise enough to not spend his whole campaign complaining about the 2020 election. Biden is highly unpopular — even among Democrats — and a Kamala Harris presidency would be even worse though it’s hard to conceive how anybody could be worse than Joe.
Trump should campaign not on isolationism or populism but on solving the problems Biden has created by opening our borders, bringing our economy to its knees, and on the “wokeness” Biden has forced on our military.
Trump can campaign on keeping a majority on the Supreme Court, which Trump created with his nominations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. We can’t afford another Biden term that would turn that majority into a liberal one. There are too many issues — gun control, abortion, and many more — to risk a liberal majority in the Supreme Court.
Whether or not Trump does, he could easily lose because he is hated by a significant segment of voters and by the media. It would be far better to have a stronger conservative on the ballot such as Nikki Haley or Tim Scott. William F. Buckley, Jr. once said that we should always vote for the most conservative person on the ballot. Trump, for all his faults, is immensely more conservative than Biden.
Steered correctly, populism and conservatism can march together to win the White House back from Biden and Harris, to win the House again, and possibly to win the Senate. Trump or not, that’s the goal we all have to work toward.
via spectator