It is expected that former Vice President Mike Pence will soon announce his election campaign for the White House against former President Donald Trump, who served under his rule, after he formed a political action committee (Super Pac), which is the biggest step for the nomination, but Pence portrays himself as a “classic conservative.” He will return the Republican Party to its roots that preceded Trump’s accession to power, and adopt conservative principles similar to former President Ronald Reagan, which are completely different from the populist policies of both Trump and Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, and bet on the reunion of the Christian right, fiscal conservatives, and national security hawks within a party Trump changed him. However, Pence faces many difficulties and dilemmas. What are the strengths and weaknesses of his candidacy, and can he win against Trump?
“ready to drive”
The launch of a new “Super Pac” (Political Action Committee) that supports Mike Pence as the 2024 presidential candidate, on Monday, is an essential step that predicts the imminent candidacy of the former vice president and his entry into the field of the Republican primaries in the coming weeks, amid an optimistic tone from the leadership of the Political Action Committee that launched It calls itself “Committed to America,” which includes two co-chairs, former Representative, Pence’s close friend Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), and veteran Republican adviser Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole’s presidential campaign in 1996 and was the chief political strategist of the American Chamber of Commerce.
For example, Hensarling described, in a statement to the committee, Mike Pence as “the conservative leader that the American nation needs at this critical time,” and that he “continually demonstrated with his transition from chairing the Republican convention in the US House of Representatives, to the governorship of Indiana, to serving as deputy President, has an unparalleled commitment to conservative principles and the Constitution, so Mike can win, and he’s ready to lead now.”
The Pence team is encouraged by the fact that the PAC’s executive director is Bobby Sabarro, who managed Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s re-election campaign in 2022, when he defeated his nationally recognized Democratic rival Stacy Abrams by a wider margin than he did in 2018. That is why Sabarro believes that What he did successfully with Governor Kemp will take him onto the US national stage, marshalling an unprecedented voter-contact program to win and make Mike Pence the next US president, an approach the former vice president began with several trips to New Hampshire over the past year, as well as to other states like Iowa. and South Carolina, and plans to make close trips to New Hampshire again and Iowa on two separate stops in the coming weeks.
What is he betting on?
Despite the difficulty of the battle against two populist opponents such as Trump and DeSantis, who is awaiting his candidacy soon, Pence is betting on carving out a good space among the primary Republican voters by appealing to evangelicals, who are the largest segment of the party, and adopting a hard line to support the ban on abortion at the federal level, and the promotion of free trade, and push back against Republican efforts to police and challenge big business on ideological grounds.
According to his political action committee, Pence’s candidacy will focus heavily on winning over evangelical voters, particularly in Iowa, where the committee plans to organize caucuses in all 99 of the state’s frontrunners for the presidency early next year. Speaking to reporters, Republican consultant Scott Reed called the Iowa caucuses the “defining event” of Pence’s candidacy and predicted a wave of retail policies to market Pence as president in every county as if we were running a campaign for county sheriff.
As Pence previously confirmed in a recent interview, the state of Iowa resembles Indiana (his home state), which he used to rule, more than any other state in the union, and that he feels there as if he is at home.
Reagan style
And if Trump represents the populist new right, Pence is preparing to run for the presidency similar to former Republican President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), who was popular among Americans in general and with massive support from Republicans in particular, as his team is betting on what they describe as the “Reagan coalition.” consisting of the Christian right, financial conservatives, and national security hawks, by reassembling this alliance within a party other than Trump, which was what Pence indicated to him in a speech he delivered in New Hampshire a few days ago when he said that the appeals of populism that is not committed to conservative principles must be resisted, and that he will follow policies Reagan is also on her economic side with a highly anticipated call for “free trade with free nations,” according to a New York Times report.
The former vice president portrays himself as a “Reagan keeper” and takes sharply different positions from Trump and DeSantis on the most important policy questions framing the Republican race for the 2024 election, yet confronting Trump head-on will force Pence to confront the inherent contradictions of the job. As a man who had always agreed with the former president’s policies for four years during the turmoil of his administration.
man himself
But Pence’s political action committee will reintroduce him to the country as “a man of his own,” as Scott Reed says, “People know Mike Pence but they don’t know him very well,” referring to “the defining moment that has defined Pence’s position over the past two years, starting with his rejection of the campaign.” The pressure Trump exerted before and during January 6, 2021, to get him to overstep his constitutional authority after President Joe Biden won the Electoral College (Electoral College) votes.
Although this is not a winning issue with the GOP base, Pence’s team believes there are enough Republicans he could win over who describe this moment as a commitment to constitutional principles.
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Pence alone
Pence stands almost alone among his declared and would-be Republican rivals, defending views that were once a standard issue for his party. For example, he calls for cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of any serious plan to deal with the US national debt, an approach that was pre-Trump entering politics. The American patriotism in 2015 is like a usual “Republican Orthodoxy” that works and calls for cutting entitlement programs, but Trump changed that and promised in his third campaign, which is now underway, not to cut any of the two programs, as he attacked DeSantis regarding this issue, claiming that the Governor of Florida will cut those programs. .
On the other hand, Pence criticized Trump and Biden’s agreement not to prejudice Social Security and Medicare. He said he would explain to people how the debt crisis will affect their children and grandchildren, stressing that his plan to cut benefits will not apply to Social Security and Medicare payments for people who are retired today or who will retire in the next 25 years, but he will put forward ideas to cut spending for people under the age of 40.
foreign policy differences
Pence also draws a stark contrast in foreign policy with his Republican rivals. While both Trump and DeSantis have questioned whether the United States should support Ukraine in its fight against the Russian offensive, Pence sees the battle as a “modern version of the Cold War,” criticizing what he described as A kind of movement is afoot in the Republican Party to abandon the US commitment to being the leader of the free world and this explains why America provides military support to Ukraine.
Unlike almost every major Republican candidate for president, Pence still defends former President George W. Bush’s decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, despite his admission that the information about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which Bush used to justify the invasion, was wrong, as Pence says, he “In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush formulated a doctrine that I fully supported, that it is hard for your enemies to project strength if they are standing back.”
Other internal variations
Pence is also resisting the anti-corporate rage that dominates Republican politics today, on the belief that limited government means laissez-faire in the private sector. The former vice president was one of the first major Republicans to criticize DeSantis for his fight against Disney giants in Florida, but from the point of view of New Right politicians like DeSantis, government conservatives are limited in their thinking and naive because they ignore the fact that liberals have increased their influence in major American institutions. and within academia, Fortune 500 companies, and the media, which is why conservatives need to use government power to fight back.
However, the most prominent sensitive issue that distinguishes Pence from Trump is that the former will run as a strong social conservative on abortion policy. While Trump repeatedly refused in his recent appearance with CNN to say he would support a federal ban on abortion, preferring to leave the issue to each state’s decision, Mark Short, Pence’s chief adviser, considered that “referring the former president and others who aspire to the highest office in the country This case to the states, is wrong,” explaining that “Pence will support federal efforts to protect life by imposing a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy or less.”
Many obstacles
And Pence finds himself in a very unusual situation, as he is a former vice president who is trying to press again to have a prominent place in the American national dialogue on various issues, especially since the political file that he built during the Trump era was far from being the standard-bearer, at least until it was torn apart. Their relationship is January 6, 2021, and he’s far behind in national polls compared to Trump and DeSantis, and he’s made no effort to channel the prevailing populist energies in the Republican Party.
Opinion polls show Pence will start his 2024 campaign as a historically unpopular candidate, with recent polls from Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press indicating that only a slight majority of Republicans like him, and as many as four in 10. They don’t like him, yet a CBS poll showed that 57 percent of Republicans said they would not consider voting for him, and nationally, 60 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Pence, compared to 29 percent who are in favor. However, Pence and his campaign may find solace in the numbers of Trump himself in May 2015 when he ran for the first time for the presidential elections, as a poll for the Washington Post and ABC News showed that 71 percent of Americans and 65 percent of Republicans They have a negative view of him, but shortly after the launch of his campaign, the same poll showed a surprisingly rapid reverse change at the time, as 57 percent of Republicans liked Trump, while 40 percent did not like him, which is about the same rate that Pence stands at now.
Aaron Blake writes in The Washington Post, “The Pence administration is a traditional, conservative Reagan-style Republican campaign, focusing on ideas that have become less popular on the right, including support for Ukraine, entitlement reform, and free trade, but it appears that the adventure of returning the party in the end “To its foundations, it entails a widespread GOP break with Trump. Pence’s bad numbers can’t really get any better unless Trump’s numbers go down.”
Congress support
There is little chance that Pence will endorse many members of Congress, which is reflected in his team’s recognition that Pence does not need elected officials to confirm his credentials. However, it is not yet clear how many Republican donors would support his bid after an early sign of interest emerged last week in Dallas when billionaire Ross Perot Jr., a real estate developer and son of former independent presidential candidate Ross Perot, hosted a lunch for the former vice president with donors. Two other presidents, according to the New York Times.
Pence, however, has something else to offer for now, which is that he is willing to dispense with a staple of modern-day Republican presidential campaigns, Trump’s ongoing war against the media. “People want to see us back on the threshold of civility in public debate, and when I say That’s for the people, I think democracy depends on large doses of civility, and that’s why I’m getting a very deep response from the masses.”
