Mike Pence couldn’t have asked for a more welcoming audience. For nearly 30 minutes, the man who served as Donald J. Trump’s vice president drew repeated applause as he forcefully reiterated his support for Israel at a conference of mostly conservative Jewish leaders in midtown Manhattan.
He barely paused as his questioner, Zvika Klein, the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, asked Mr. Pence, an evangelical Christian, to lead the room in prayer for the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas on Oct. 7. “That would be My great honor: let us pray,” he said.
His invocation drew applause and shouts of “Amen.”
In the seven months since he dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Pence, faced with inevitable defeats in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire caucuses, has been looking for a friendly audience like this as he heads out is on a mission to revive his political career. But just as important, he presents himself as a guardian of the conservative traditions of a Republican Party that he grew up with and that have since been redefined by Mr. Trump.
In one example, he appears in high-profile television interviews to criticize Trump’s stance on abortion. He announced that his political advocacy group would spend $20 million this year on appearances and advertising to promote vulnerable conservative positions on issues such as tariffs, government spending and America’s role in the world.
Mr. Pence is the most prominent Republican in the country to say he would not support Mr. Trump, the man who picked Mr. Pence as governor of Indiana and put him in the White House. And he has made it clear that, at age 65, he is not ruling out another run for the presidency.
“The role I want to play is to be a champion of a broad, mainstream conservative agenda that has defined the Republican Party since the days of Ronald Reagan,” he said in an interview before appearing at the conference. “I see some signs that some voices in and around our party are deviating from that – I want my voice, my organization, to be an anchor to windward.”
Still, Mr. Pence is clearly out of step with the party that once embraced him. For many Trump loyalists, he is still the vice president who refused to remain in power with Mr. Trump on January 6, 2021.
“Judas Pence is a dead man walking with MAGA, regardless of the 30 pieces of silver in his PAC,” said Stephen K. Bannon, a leader in Mr. Trump’s movement, referring to Mr. Pence’s advocacy group Advancing American Freedom. . (He made his comments in a text just hours before a federal judge ordered him to report to prison by July 1 to begin serving a four-month sentence imposed on him for complying with a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee January 6 attack on the Capitol.)
With his reserved presence in the Midwest, Mr. Pence stands in sharp contrast to the Republican Party of today, embodied by Mr. Trump and, for that matter, Mr. Bannon. In the interview, Mr. Pence, who spoke quietly as he settled into a couch, seemed taken aback by the idea that he had become an island in his own party, a lone Republican Robinson Crusoe, while Mr. Trump was theirs Party redesigned in his name.
“I hope not,” he said. “I hope I’m on a continent. I’m where I’ve always been since I joined the Republican Party.”
“When I was running for president, people often said, ‘The problem with Mike Pence is that he’s running in a Republican Party that no longer exists,'” Pence said. “That wasn’t my experience. Everywhere I’ve campaigned, almost without exception, whether they supported the former president or someone else, people said, “I appreciate what you stand for.” I’m convinced it’s still a conservative party .”
But the signs of his isolation are numerous. Mr. Pence said he “hasn’t spoken to Mr. Trump in a long time.” Republicans say it’s unlikely he will be offered a prominent speaking slot when the party meets in Milwaukee for its convention in July. A YouGov/Economist poll in March found that 52 percent of Republicans had a negative opinion of Mr. Pence, compared to 42 percent who had a positive opinion of the former vice president.
And despite the way he remembered his reception as a presidential candidate, Mr. Pence never broke above single digits in most early polls, even with the advantage of being a former vice president. He had to drop out of the race before he even got to Iowa.
The idea of a former vice president not supporting the president he served is so extraordinary that President Biden invoked it in a sharp-edged joke at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
In contrast, Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, and Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, both of whom received far more support in their own unsuccessful bids for the Republican presidential nomination, said they would vote for Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence said he would not vote for Mr. Biden but did not say who he might support.
“I like Mike a lot — I highly recommended him to Trump in ’16,” said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives. But, he said, “Mike Pence now finds himself in a party that sounds different than it used to, while at the same time appealing to a different constituency than it did two years ago.” And unfortunately for Mike, that often drives him into a corner. On his current path, he will shrink to the “Never Trump” electorate.”
“There is no future for the Republican Party to be the anti-Trump,” Mr. Gingrich said.
Mr. Pence has walked a fine line as he has tried in recent months to draw attention to — and criticize — a figure as enormously popular in the party as Mr. Trump, a former ally who is trying to out-compete Mr. Pence to bring out the party’s spotlight.
In the interview, Mr. Pence denounced the case against Mr. Trump, which led to his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush-money payment to a porn star. “I expect his felony convictions to be overturned. This case should never have been brought.”
But at the Jerusalem Post forum he spoke little about Mr. Trump other than to address Mr. Trump’s decision, as popular in the room as the former president himself, to open the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem embarrassed.
Mr. Pence argued that it was Mr. Trump who had changed over the past four years and deviated from traditional Republican positions.
“On a whole range of issues, I have seen the president pursue a different agenda than the one with which we have governed,” Pence said. “I see the president moving in the direction of some of the isolationist voices in our party. Or the national debt – he never tried to reform the entitlements that accounted for 85 percent of our federal spending.”
Mr. Pence has been particularly vocal in attacking Mr. Trump over abortion. While Mr. Pence and many other conservatives are pushing for a nationwide ban on the procedure, Mr. Trump is calling for restrictions to be left to the states. Mr. Pence’s position has won him some admirers in key parts of the Republican coalition.
“He is the steady rudder of the pro-life movement among Republican leaders,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading group that opposes abortion rights. “He doesn’t change. He was never one to test the wind.”
Ms. Dannenfelser, whose organization is endorsing Mr. Trump this November, said Mr. Pence would receive strong support from abortion opponents if he decided to return to politics in a post-Trump world.
“There will have to be a gut check on the other side of the upcoming presidential campaign,” she said. “And it would be an important and essential part of that gut check.”
Tim Chapman, a senior adviser to Mr. Pence’s advocacy group, said the former vice president sees himself as “a keeper of the flame during a pretty turbulent time on the right.”
“Everyone is playing the game to show how close they are to Trump,” Chapman said. “We don’t have to pretend. Everyone knows where we are. We are liberated in a way that no other group is liberated.”
As Mr. Pence travels the country, giving speeches and interviews, raising money and presenting himself as a potential future candidate for national office – “I’ll keep you updated,” he said when asked about running for the White House again would aspire to – his The next chapter appears to be bleak, at least until November.
Mr. Pence is running against the most powerful figure in the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan. To date, there seems to be little room in Trump world for a candidate like Mr. Pence.
“He’s done,” Mr. Bannon said. “But like all professional politicians, he is addicted to being relevant.”
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2024-06-08 02:26:37
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