Mike Pence Announces 2024 Bid, With No Mention of Man Who Wanted Him Hanged
Mike Pence is running to become the presidential candidate for the party that almost led to his execution.
The former vice president made it all official Wednesday with a video announcement that did not once mention Donald Trump or January 6.
Instead, he warned about the Biden administration and the dangers of the “radical left.”
It’s hard to pin down exactly why so many Republicans think they can win this primary, but the more Republicans who run, the more Trump can coast through a divided primary. As with Ron DeSantis, or Chris Christie, or Vivek Ramaswamy, or Tim Scott, or Nikki Haley, or Insert Former Trump Fan Afraid to Criticize Here, it’s difficult to understand the case for most of the candidates. And Pence is really no exception.
Pence is not exactly the most charismatic type; like DeSantis, Pence has had his robotic moments. His big plan to overcome this, and to win the election, is to reportedly put together a “Reagan coalition” consisting of the Christian right, fiscal conservatives, and national security hawks. How those numbers can grow to any substance is hard to say.
The Christian right, if they are to be distinguished at all by one issue alone, may very well vote for the president who has already stacked a court that banned abortion. Fiscal conservatives, if their only real concern is cutting taxes for the wealthy, will have their pick of Republican candidates. And the same goes for national security hawks, who have a whole roster of candidates ready to make them feel warm inside about selling more bombs and destabilizing more of the world.
The math just doesn’t math.
If there is a story for Pence to embrace, at least to potentially rise above the slew of candidates who will likely remain at 5 percent or lower, it’s of actively resisting Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy. But if his campaign announcement Wednesday is any indication, that isn’t in the cards.
Pence hasn’t completely shied away from condemning Trump for his role in inciting the January 6 attacks on the Capitol in the past. “President Trump was wrong; I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day. And I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable,” he said in March.
In his memoir released last year, Pence attacked Trump for his handling of the 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, the investigations into Russian election interference, and both impeachments he faced.
Still, Pence also wrote of a heartwarming moment in which he told Trump he was “never gonna stop praying” for him. Trump, Pence wrote, smiled back, saying, “That’s right—don’t ever change.” And it seems that nonconfrontational strategy is the one Pence is choosing to lead his campaign with.
Pence’s trepidation about fully committing to going full-steam on a man he is actively trying to beat in an election won’t hold for much longer. There are two roads ahead: one where Pence will certainly lose if he sticks to being wishy-washy on Trump (e.g., by calling his indictment “political persecution”) or one in which he will probably lose, by claiming his own lane as the man who actually stood up to Trump when it counted. Few, if any, candidates in the race can say that.
Give it a go, Mike! One might suggest you have nothing to lose but your pride, but pretty much every Republican running for president has already lost that too!