Mike Pence is trying to navigate his way out of the dead-end called Trump
Timothy P. Carney
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Mike Pence wants to be the Republican nominee in 2024, but he has a few major obstacles in his way. They’re all named Donald Trump.
Like any Republican, Pence needs to juggle the fact that Trump is simultaneously toxic and untouchable. A certain portion of the GOP base will not tolerate any criticism of Donald Trump. A different portion of the electorate — some Republicans, but more independents — see Trump as uniquely harmful and see his presidency as a stain on the country.
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These obstacles are tougher for Pence than for the average Republican hopeful. How can he take credit for the conservative successes of 2017-2021 (tax cuts, judges, Putin not invading anyone), while also taking credit for resisting Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election? Pence has given himself an additional challenge: How can he run as the continuation of Trump-Pence while also campaigning on his own policy preference, which is pre-Trump conservatism?
Pence gave it a try Wednesday at the American Enterprise Institute, where he spoke about his new book, So Help Me God, his vision for the 2024 GOP, and his assessment of 2016.
“Nobody else could have beaten Hillary in 2016,” Pence said of his old boss. Pence also said that the GOP primary voters chose Trump precisely because Trump would fight “the Clinton machine” with brass knuckles.
This account of the 2016 primary and general election might be partially true, but it’s certainly useful for Pence. If Trump’s nomination — particularly Trump’s defeat of Tea Partiers Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — is understood as a rejection of the conservative movement of the time, then it is a rejection of what Pence believed and still believes.
Pence is and always has been a pro-business, tax-cutting, free-trade, social conservative — a term from back when “social conservative” meant opposing abortion and gay marriage. Trump’s primary base was none of those things, unless you define “social conservative” to mean anti-immigration and generally seeking restoration of American Greatness.
So Pence maintains that Trump alone could fix it back in 2016, but not because of Trump’s populism. No, Trump was the man simply because of his political meanness. Which brings us to the next problem.
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If meanness is the key to beating Democrats, and if it’s what GOP voters are looking for, Pence hardly seems like the natural choice. Pence says the times are different now, though. He argues that what America and GOP primary voters want now is a unifier, not a divider. That is, 2016 was different because the enemy was Hillary. Now the enemy is failed policy.
There’s a logic to this argument, but it’s kind of a narrow, winding path. Trying to run on kind-of-a-continuation-of-Trump, but also kind-of-the-guy-who-stopped Trump is tough. Trying to claim the mantle of the new GOP while trying to revive the Republican Study Committee circa 2009 is not easy, to put it mildly.