Donald Trump has reportedly picked Indiana governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate (though it’s not quite official yet). On the surface, Pence comes off as a traditional conservative Republican, and his experience both in Congress and as a governor will round out Trump’s relative inexperience and maverick-y appeal on the ticket. Right now, a thousand keyboards are clacking as political reporters churn out stories saying in so many words that the selection of Pence will likely help reassure Republicans who have their doubts about Trump’s understanding of and commitment to conservative principles.
Don’t believe any of them. Recall that last year, Indiana passed a state religious freedom restoration act (RFRA), which was the state version of existing federal legislation that passed Congress and was signed into President Bill Clinton with overwhelming bipartisan support. (John McCormack has an explainer of the legislation here.) Though the Indiana law is not in conflict with other LGBT protections, it was decried as an act of bigotry. Journalists started fishing for villains, settling on the religious owners of an Indiana pizza parlor who said they would not (hypothetically) want to cater a gay wedding. Companies such as Apple and Ebay, which have no problem doing business in bastions of enlightened attitudes on gays as Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, threatened to boycott Indiana. (Curiously, they have not also threatened to boycott the existing 21 states with RFRAs.)
Once it became clear that Pence was going to have to make a stand on religious freedom, he folded. Indiana’s religious freedom law was gutted at Pence’s direction within a week of it being passed.
Shortly afterward, Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas shepherded a RFRA through the state legislature, and, despite some national criticism, did so with minimum fuss. And in North Carolina, when state legislators passed a law codifying single-sex bathrooms for public buildings in the state, Governor Pat McCrory managed to ride out the first few brutal national news cycles and is holding fast even as Obama has directed the full weight of the federal government to come down on him.
These two counterexamples are useful because just a few years, the likeliest candidate for most popular socially conservative governor among these three would have been Pence. In fact, as a former talk radio host who is less than reserved, Pence’s schtick as a politician was often about proclaiming he was more conservative than thou. Pence liked to say he was a “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.” Erick Erickson describes Pence’s trajectory this way: “In Congress, Mike Pence was the standard bearer for conservatism. It was his cause. He was the elected Buckley. And I am now so thoroughly disappointed in him.” In this context, Pence’s actions surrounding Indiana’s RFRA controversy (and to a lesser extent, his cozying up to the unprincipled and amoral Trump) seem positively Judas-like.
And over the course of the last year, Pence’s actions look even worse. It would be one thing if the impetus behind the attack on religious liberty was actually to prevent discrimination, but it seems believers have more to fear from gay rights advocates than vice versa. The Iowa Civil Rights Commission recently tried—unsuccessfully—to criminalize Christian teaching on sexual sins even inside churches. (Canada has actually tried to legally muzzle pastors in the issue, so suggesting this is a goal of the more noxious elements of the gay rights movement isn’t exactly far fetched.) Religious liberty is actually foundational to all First Amendment protections, because whether or not your beliefs are formally codified by a church, synagogue, or mosque, the private process at which everyone arrives at the truth is nonetheless so sacred it should be protected from government intrusion.
The fact that Pence, who is otherwise loudly socially conservative, can’t be trusted to stand up for religious freedom is a stinging rebuke to religious voters. Now, Donald Trump does just fine in earning support among the fuzzily defined “evangelical” voters. However, among GOP voters, perhaps the biggest pocket of resistance to Trump comes from weekly churchgoers and those that can actually be pinpointed as devout believers. These are also, not coincidentally, the voters most likely to be concerned by threats on religious freedom and aware of Pence’s betrayal.
It’s also revealing that Hoosiers themselves are acutely aware of Pence’s problems. The headline on CNN at the moment is “Indiana GOP to Trump: Take Mike Pence, please.” According to CNN, “Removing Pence from the governor’s race, several senior Indiana Republican officials, aides and operatives said, would allow the state GOP to escape from the turmoil of years of social battles over same-sex marriage and religious freedom.”
That’s accurate but slightly misleading. The problem wasn’t that Pence caused turmoil by taking on religious freedom issues, but rather that he handled it so badly. Right now, the GOP’s nominee for Indiana’s third congressional district, which includes Ft. Wayne, is state senator Jim Banks. Banks emerged victorious in the highly competitive primary in no small part because he and his wife—who filled his seat while he served in Afghanistan—emerged as leaders in pushing back on Pence’s cowardice toward religious freedom and made it an issue in Banks’s campaign.
No doubt Trump’s pick has been lifeline to Pence. In fact, the Washington Post announced his selection saying, “Mike Pence’s political obituary was being drafted last year. Now he’s GOP’s likely VP pick.” But unless Trump’s campaign prospects improve considerably, when Hillary Clinton wins in November more than a few social conservatives will console themselves with the thought that Pence’s career has been buried, once and for all.
