Former Vice President Mike Pence really wants you to know that he gave a “major address” at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College last week. And, indeed, he delivered his harshest rebuke yet to his former boss Donald Trump, Trump’s imitators and the rising populism on the right.
Although he devoted some of the speech to rehashing Republican talking points about the Biden administration and waxing nostalgic for the Reagan era, Pence managed to deliver a blistering critique of the Trumpian and populist betrayal of conservative principles. And, unlike some of his previous attacks, he called out Donald Trump by name.
He delivered his harshest rebuke yet to his former boss Donald Trump, Trump’s imitators and the rising populism on the right.
But while Pence intended the speech to be a manifesto for a conservative restoration, it still reads instead like a eulogy for a bygone era. This, ultimately, was a nostalgic dead letter describing a party that no longer exists.
Pence insisted that the choice facing the GOP was existential: “Should the new populism of the right seize and guide our party, the GOP as we have long known it will cease to exist. And the fate of American freedom would be in doubt.”
This choice is also binary, he insisted, because the divide between traditional conservatism and this new Trumpian populist was “fundamental,” and “unbridgeable.”
Glossing over his own role in advancing, supporting and enabling Trump’s brand of right-wing populism, Pence cast himself as one of the last remaining champions of Reagan-era conservatism. And that’s where reality starts to sink in. Beneath the strong-sounding rhetoric is a foundational truth: Pence in 2024 is a man out of time.
Even as he faces multiple criminal charges, Trump continues to dominate the GOP primary field, while his former vice president had just 7% of the primary vote in the latest CNN poll.
So, the Saint Anselm speech is unlikely to change the trajectory of the race. Maybe Pence is aware that his campaign is doomed — and maybe he is not. But he is clearly thinking about his legacy. And he has decided the best way to rehabilitate that legacy is by spending what may be his last few months in the spotlight laying out all of the ways the new GOP has abandoned the conservative principles that were once taken for granted in his party.
Conservatives once stood for limited government, a strong national defense, free markets, fiscal responsibility and traditional values, Pence opined. But the new GOP populists — including Trump — now reject free markets, ignore deficits and embrace international appeasement.
These conservatives are no longer defenders of the Constitution. Instead, they are eroding norms, Pence said, alluding to Trump’s role in this erosion, as well as the former president’s so-called imitators.
But here again, Pence wants to have it both ways. He took credit for all the accomplishments of the “Trump-Pence administration,” but tried to contrast Trump circa 2016 with Trump in 2023.
“When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016,” Pence said, “he promised to govern as a conservative. And together we did just that.” Now, he claims, the new right-wing populists are following in the footsteps of long-dreaded progressives like William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long and Bernie Sanders. Worse, Trump and his ragtag group of populist wannabes are actually starting to sound … progressive. “They argue that we can only end our crises at home by abandoning our allies abroad,” Pence claimed. “Like progressives, the Republican populist government should dictate how private businesses operate.” In a jab at primary rival Ron DeSantis, Pence told the audience at Saint Anselm: “The governor of Florida even used the power of the state to punish corporations for taking a political stand he disagreed with.” Self-consciously echoing Ronald Reagan’s famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” Pence insisted “we have come to a Republican time of choosing.”
“This is not conservatism,” the former vice president declared. “It is Republicanism that prioritizes power over principles.” Self-consciously echoing Ronald Reagan’s famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” Pence insisted “we have come to a Republican time of choosing.” But — as Pence knows well — the GOP has already chosen. It chose Donald Trump. It chose populism. It rejected traditional conservatism. And for four years Pence stood at Trump’s side and watched it happening around him. The time for choosing has come and gone. And, on some level, Mike Pence must know that.
Charlie Sykes is an MS NOW contributor and the author of the newsletter "To the Contrary." 
