Mike Pence first won his northeast Indiana House seat in 2000 at the same time that George W. Bush was elected president. Nearly 23 years on, Pence, now a former vice president and Indiana governor, is the closest thing in the prospective 2024 Republican presidential field to the traditional conservatism espoused by the former president.
Pence, understudy to former President Donald Trump from 2017-21, has said he’ll make a decision by spring on whether to enter the GOP race, presumably for the right to challenge President Joe Biden. To win the nomination, Pence would have to beat Trump, his former boss, and a pair of declared primary rivals: former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and “anti-woke” entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. The field could still grow beyond Pence, too.
MIKE PENCE SHOWS POLITICAL COURAGE BY SUPPORTING UKRAINE
Pence famously clashed with Trump in their administration’s waning days over whether to lead the certification in Congress of the presidential election results that made Biden the next commander in chief. Pence and his family briefly had to go into hiding as rioters in the Capitol on Jan. 6 sought his scalp for having the temerity to defy Trump’s wishes.
Now both private citizens, Pence is slowly but surely differentiating himself from Trump’s brand of populist nationalism, particularly in steadfast support for Ukraine, now into its second year fighting aggressor Russia. Pence on Feb. 24 rebuked fellow Republicans who have given less-than-robust support for America’s defense of Ukraine — a group that includes Trump and possible presidential campaign rivals such as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
Pence’s statements are in the mold of Bush after the 9/11 attacks, drawing clear lines between acceptable and unacceptable behavior by other countries. It’s a bet there’s still appetite and demand for a morality-based foreign policy.
“I would say, anyone that thinks that Vladimir Putin will stop at Ukraine is wrong,” Pence said in an interview with NBC News. “While some in my party have taken a somewhat different view, there can be no room in the leadership of the Republican Party for apologists for Putin.”
Trump and DeSantis both accused Biden of provoking unnecessary clashes with global powers by traveling to Ukraine on Feb. 20.
“World War III has never been closer than it is right now,” Trump said in a recent video in which he pledged to “clean house of all of the warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists in the deep state, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the national security industrial complex.”
Pence has channeled Bush on domestic areas, too. Pence said on Feb. 22 that cuts to Medicare and Social Security should be “on the table for the long term,” differentiating himself from Trump.
“We’re looking at a debt crisis in this country over the next 25 years that’s driven by entitlements, and nobody in Washington, D.C., wants to talk about it,” Pence said on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
Efforts to pare back Medicare and Social Security benefits have hurt Republicans in the past. Bush found that out the hard way in early 2005 when, after narrowly winning a second White House term, his administration outlined a major initiative to reform Social Security. The proposal included partial privatization of the system, personal Social Security accounts, and options to permit people to divert a portion of their Social Security tax (FICA) into secured investments.
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Congressional Democrats, not surprisingly, pushed back hard on the idea. But so did many Hill Republicans after getting an earful from constituents, particularly older ones. By early that summer, the initiative was on life support. Amid other problems and Bush’s declining poll ratings, GOP congressional leaders quietly pulled the plug on his Social Security plan. By that October, even Bush had to acknowledge that his effort had failed.
Whether Pence’s embrace of Bush-era GOP themes is a winning strategy for 2024 is very much an open question. Trump pushed the party in a much more populist direction. But if it turns out there is an appetite for a return to “Bush-ism,” Pence can claim credit for being the first one there. If not, he’ll likely seem more like a 2000s-era relic, with little to no chance of claiming the 2024 GOP nomination.
