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Tag: Pence’s refusal

  • The Dead-Enders of the Reagan-Era GOP

    The Dead-Enders of the Reagan-Era GOP

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    For those of us who very much want to see Donald Trump defeated in November by the widest possible margin, the news on Friday afternoon that former Vice President Mike Pence would not be endorsing his former boss seemed encouraging. Not that Pence commands a large faction of voters. Given that he dropped out of the Republican presidential-primary race late last year after failing to rise above the lower single digits, there’s no reason to assume that he does. Still, every prominent, normie Republican who rejects Trump moves us further down the road.

    But toward what?

    A lot of my Never Trump allies on the center-right feel sure that Pence’s refusal to endorse the man he served for four years points the way (or “creates a permission structure,” as the fashionable parlance has it) for Republican voters to abandon the former president. By joining Nikki Haley, Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, Bill Barr, Mark Esper, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney, Dan Coats, John Bolton, H. R. McMaster, Liz Cheney, and a long list of additional former Cabinet members, present and former members of Congress, and state officials in opposing Trump’s bid to become president again, Pence supposedly helps guarantee Trump’s loss in November.

    But is this really true? I’m quite willing to believe that some measurable number of Reaganite Republicans may be persuaded to stay home, or to vote for someone other than Trump, on Election Day. (One wonders if somewhat more of them might have been moved to do so had Pence called the post–January 6 Trump unfit for the presidency, instead of focusing on Trump’s ideological heterodoxy.) But this will doom Trump’s chances only if he fails to pick up support from different sorts of voters to replace the ones he loses from the (former) GOP mainstream. Is it possible that the very act of Republicans of the Reagan and Bush eras distancing themselves from Trump could burnish the former president’s credentials as a man seeking to transform his party in a populist direction?

    [David Frum: The ego has crash-landed]

    The Trump presidency was peculiar. On the one hand, this highly irregular candidate who attacked the Republican establishment and dissented from the party’s long-standing policy commitments on a range of issues managed to win the nomination and the presidency. He also brought with him to the White House people such as Steve Bannon, who actively wanted to blow up the GOP’s electoral coalition in order to transform it into a “workers’ party.”

    On the other hand, these radicals were severely outnumbered in the administration by holdovers from the prior dispensation of the Republican Party. These GOP normies pretty much ran the show; their primary accomplishments were helping ensure a large corporate tax cut and the appointment of staunchly conservative federal judges and Supreme Court justices. Most of the Trump administration’s other, right-populist initiatives—such as anti-internationalism in foreign policy and funding the construction of a wall along the southern border—were blocked or slow-walked for four years.

    When it came time for Trump’s reelection bid, in 2020, enough upper-income, highly educated, suburban Republicans defected to Joe Biden for Trump to lose. One path toward Republican victory this coming November would involve trying to win back those suburban voters by portraying Trump as a safe alternative to Biden, who will mainly aim to get the economy back to where it was before the coronavirus pandemic sent the country into a tailspin. If this were the Trump 2024 electoral strategy, Pence’s refusal to endorse the former president might be a serious problem for the campaign—because it would signal to like-minded voters that Trump doesn’t deserve their support.

    Equally possible, though, is that Pence’s refusal to endorse hastens the GOP’s transformation into the party that Trump and Bannon had originally hoped to build eight years ago—a workers’ party that could more precisely be described as a cross-racial coalition of voters who haven’t graduated from college.

    The evidence in favor of such an evolution of the GOP has been mixed over the past few election cycles, but polling so far in this cycle has pointed to something bigger going on, with significant signs of a “racial realignment” under way. If such a shift proves real in November, it could well turn out to have been enabled by Pence, Haley, and others abandoning Trump over his divergences from Reaganite conservatism. The policies favored by those old-line Reagan-Bush Republicans are no longer particularly popular with less educated voters, and the highly ideological and inauthentic way in which the old guard talks and thinks also diverges from what Trump is teaching many of these voters to look for in a political tribune: unapologetic brashness, braggadocio, and bullshit.

    I’m not suggesting that this is a ticket to a Trump victory in November. All of Trump’s many liabilities remain. He’s despised by tens of millions of Americans. He’s been indicted in multiple jurisdictions. He faces dozens of felony charges. He attempted to overturn the 2020 election by spreading delusional lies about election fraud that he continues to affirm. He incited a riot that disrupted the national legislature as it tried to certify the results of the election, making him the first president in American history to attempt a coup to remain in power.

    [Damon Linker: Democrats should pick a new presidential candidate now]

    All of this and so much more will make the 2024 election a challenge for Trump. But the very fact that polls show the election is close, even tilting against Biden, points to a surprisingly high floor under the former president—higher than was the case in either 2016 or 2020. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s on track to win. But it does suggest that the GOP’s new electoral coalition is stable and possibly growing—even as Reaganite Republican grandees express constant outright disgust at the man who is somehow behind this stability and growth.

    Whether or not Trump manages to win, we’re likely to see the continued evolution of the Republican base away from what Pence, Haley, and others would like it to be. As I’ve argued before, the relatively few voters who pine for a Reagan restoration aren’t going to find it in the present-day Republican Party. They might not fully find it in the Democratic Party of Joe Biden either. But at least there, they can make common cause with centrist factions open to the Reaganite mix of low taxes, liberal immigration, free trade, and hawkish internationalism combined with a civil religion of American exceptionalism. In the post-Trump GOP, such views are actively unwelcome (aside from the tax cuts).

    That’s because a sizable portion of Americans who haven’t graduated from college, of whatever race or ethnicity, have different priorities—and, more and more, they form the base of the GOP. Those voters prefer to think of the nation as an armed camp; they want to see government power used to advance what they conceive as their own and their country’s interests, and they like that message conveyed in a muscular style of trash-talking vulgarity and humor. The old high-minded, edifying, and earnest Reagan speeches that portrayed America as a shining city on a hill, with the duty to defend democracies abroad, leave these voters cold. In this respect, “America First” really does work well as a slogan for the Republican Party now emerging, eight years after Trump first captured it.

    If Trump loses in November, none of this is likely to change. The new Republican base isn’t going to reverse course and suddenly decide it loves Pence and Haley after all. The old Reaganite approach is a dead end. Instead, the party will finally begin to look seriously for a Trump successor. Ron DeSantis auditioned for that role over the past year, and it didn’t work out; the voters decided they still preferred Trump himself. DeSantis will probably try again, but he’ll be joined by many others next time. (Conspicuous among them is J. D. Vance, who’s spending much of his first term as the junior senator from Ohio testing out elements of a right-populist agenda for a post-Trump Republican Party.)

    No matter who Trump’s successor turns out to be, that person will be someone who speaks the language of non-college-educated voters and views the world as they do. The GOP is now a vehicle for right-wing populism. Pence expressing dissatisfaction with this fact likely does more to confirm the completion of this transformation than it does to scuttle the new GOP’s political ambitions.

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    Damon Linker

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  • The Brutal Things Republican Voters Say About Mike Pence

    The Brutal Things Republican Voters Say About Mike Pence

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    Mike Pence is making little secret of his presidential ambitions. He’s written his book, he’s assembling his team, he’s mastered the art of the coy non-denial when somebody asks (in between trips to Iowa) if he’s running. In early Republican-primary polls, he hovers between 6 and 7 percent—not top-tier numbers, but respectable enough. He seems to think he has at least an outside shot at winning the Republican nomination.

    And yet, ask a Republican voter about the former vice president, and you’re likely to hear some of the most withering commentary you’ve ever encountered about a politician.

    In recent weeks, I was invited to sit in on a series of focus groups conducted over Zoom. Organized by the political consultant Sarah Longwell, the groups consisted of Republican voters who supported Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. The participants were all over the country—suburban Atlanta, rural Illinois, San Diego—and they varied in their current opinions of Trump. In some cases, Longwell filtered for voters who should be in Pence’s target demographic. One group consisted entirely of two-time Trump voters who didn’t want him to run again; another was made up of conservative evangelicals, who might presumably appreciate Pence’s roots in the religious right.

    I’ve been covering Pence’s strange Trump-era arc since 2017, when I first profiled him for The Atlantic. By some accounts, he’s wanted to be president since his college-fraternity days. I’ve always been skeptical of his chances, but now that he finally seems ready to run, I wanted to understand the appeal of his prospective candidacy. My goal was to see if I could find at least one Pence supporter.

    From the January/February 2018 issue: God’s plan for Mike Pence

    Instead, these were some of the quotes I jotted down.

    “I don’t care for him … He’s just middle-of-the-road to me. If there was someone halfway better, I wouldn’t vote for him.”

    “He has alienated every Republican and Democrat … It’s over. It’s retirement time.”

    “He’s only gonna get the vote from his family, and I’m not even sure if they like him.”

    “He just needs to go away.”

    It went on and on like that across four different focus groups. Of the 34 Republicans who participated, I only heard four people say they’d consider Pence for president—and two of them immediately started talking themselves out of it after indicating interest.

    Some of the reasons for Pence’s lack of support were intuitive. Hard-core Trump fans said they were alienated by Pence’s refusal to block the certification of the 2020 electoral votes, as the president was demanding. This break with Trump famously prompted chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” to echo through the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

    Although the sentiment expressed in the focus groups wasn’t quite so violent, the anger was still present. During one session, three people—all of whom had reported “very favorable” views of Trump—took turns trashing Pence for what they saw as his weakness.

    “I’m so mad at Pence that I would never vote for him,” said one man named Matt. “He would be a horrible president … I just don’t think he has the leadership qualities to be president.” (I agreed to quote the participants only by their first name.)

    “That’s exactly it,” a woman named Christine said, nodding eagerly. “He didn’t have the leadership qualities to do what everyone wanted him to do on January 6. He just doesn’t have that spine.”

    A third participant, Nicholas, chimed in: “He just chose to go along with all the other RINOs and Democrats, not to upset the applecart.”

    Meanwhile, less MAGA-inclined Republicans thought Pence was too Trumpy.

    “The only thing I liked about him was that he actually did stand up to Donald Trump,” a woman named Barbara said. “He’s too a part of Trump. I don’t think Trump has a chance, and I don’t think anybody in that inner circle has a chance either.”

    “I think he put a stain on himself for any normal Republican when he joined the Trump administration,” said another participant, Justin. “And then he put a stain on himself with any Trump Republican on January 6. So I don’t think he has a constituency anywhere. I don’t know if anyone would vote for him.”

    Read: Republicans’ 2024 magical thinking

    Longwell told me this is how Pence is talked about in every focus group she holds. What to make of that 6 to 7 percent he gets in the primary polls? “I imagine there’s a cohort of GOP voters who are not particularly engaged who don’t want Trump again, and Pence is the only other name they really know,” she speculated. That, or “they’re all from Indiana,” the state where Pence served as governor. A second Republican pollster, who requested anonymity to offer his candid view, told me, “Seven percent is a weak showing for the immediate former VP.”

    Devin O’Malley, an adviser to Pence, responded to a request for comment in an email: “Mike Pence has spent the last two years traveling to more than 30 states, campaigning for dozens of candidates, and listening to potential voters. Those interactions have been incredibly positive and encouraging, and we place more value in those experiences than of a focus group conducted by disgruntled former Republicans like Sarah Longwell and paid for by some shadow organization that The Atlantic won’t disclose.” (Longwell told me the costs for the focus groups are split between The Bulwark and the Republican Accountability Project, two anti-Trump organizations with which she is affiliated.)

    What I found most fascinating about the voters’ digs at Pence was that they were almost always preceded by passing praise of his personal character: He was a “top-of-the-line guy,” a “nice man,” a “super kind, honest, decent” person. Not only did these perceived qualities fail to make him an appealing candidate, but they were also often held against him—treated as evidence that he lacked a certain presidential mettle.

    “I don’t like how Trump was just in your face with everything, but Pence is almost too far in the other direction,” one participant named Judith said.

    Perhaps these voters were identifying a simple lack of charisma. But their casual dismissal of Pence’s wholesome, God-fearing, family-man persona is emblematic of a sea change in conservative politics—and a massive miscalculation by Pence himself.

    When Pence was added to the ticket in 2016, his chief function was to vouch for Trump with mainstream Republicans, especially conservative Christian voters. Pence’s reputation as a devout evangelical gave him a certain moral credibility when he defended Trump amid scandal and outrage. He performed this task exceptionally well. Those adoring eyes, those fawning tributes, that slightly weird fixation on the breadth of his boss’s shoulders—nobody was better at playing the loyalist. And for a certain kind of voter, Pence’s loyalty provided assurance that Trump was worthy of continued support.

    Pence had his own motives, as I reported in my profile. All of this vouching for Trump was supposed to buy Pence goodwill with the base and set him up for a future presidential run. For many in Pence’s camp, the project took on a religious dimension. “If you’re Mike Pence, and you believe what he believes, you know God had a plan,” Ralph Reed, an evangelical power broker, told me back then.

    But in creating a permission structure for voters to excuse Trump’s defective character and flouting of religious values, Pence was unwittingly making himself irrelevant. In effect, he spent four years convincing conservative Christian voters that the very thing he had to offer them didn’t matter.

    In 2011, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” By 2020, that number had risen to 68 percent.

    Peter Wehner: The moral desolation of the GOP

    Pence won the argument. Now he’s reaping the whirlwind.

    In one of the focus groups, a devout Christian named Angie was asked how much she factored in moral rectitude when assessing a presidential candidate. “I try to use my faith to choose someone by character, but it hasn’t always been possible,” she said. Sometimes she had to vote for a candidate who shared her politics but didn’t live her values.

    “Who comes to mind?” the moderator asked.

    “I think Trump falls into that category,” Angie conceded. “But quite honestly, the vast majority of others do as well.” She paused. “I would say Pence actually doesn’t fall into that category. I would say his character probably aligns with biblical values fairly well.”

    But Angie remained uninterested in seeing Pence in the Oval Office. If he had a record to run on, she wasn’t aware of it.

    “Anything he did got overshadowed by all the drama of these last four years,” she said, hastening to add, “Seems like a perfectly nice man.”

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    McKay Coppins

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