Former Vice President Mike Pence launched his long-anticipated run for the White House Wednesday in suburban Des Moines by taking aim at his old boss, former President Donald Trump, the leading candidate in the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination.
Pence laid out his vision for America, but he also used his campaign launch in Ankeny to differentiate himself from Trump — and to explain to conservative voters why he said he believes the former president let him and the country down on January 6, 2021.
“Given my support for our record, it might be fair to ask why I am challenging my forbearing running mate for the Republican nomination for president,” Pence said. “It begins with a promise I made to the American people and to almighty God…and ends with a two different visions for the future of our party and the country.”
He said the January 6 riots — painted as an “insurrection” by the left and its allies in the mainstream media — occurred because Trump wrongly demanded that the vice president had the power to overturn the 2020 election results. He did not.
“[T]he American people deserve to know on that fateful day, President Trump also demanded I choose between him and our constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice,” Pence said in a scouring rebuke of the former president. “I chose the Constitution and I always will.” He added that Trump’s “reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol.”
While some violence accompanied the Capitol riots, law enforcement officials have said the FBI has found little evidence that the protests were driven by a coordinated plot to overturn the presidential election.
That didn’t stop a highly partisan congressional committee led by far-left U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MI-02) and former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, the Trump-hating Wyoming Republican who lost her congressional seat last year and has been mulling a run for president.
Wednesday marked Pence’s clearest break from Trump, as he hammered on the former president’s lack of commitment to core conservative principles.
Yet, the former vice president continues to trade on the currency of the Trump-Pence administration.
“..[A]s your vice president, I stood by president Donald Trump every single day when we made America great,” Pence said at one point
“While some in this contest have already taken to criticizing the record of the Trump-Pence administration, I am incredibly proud of our record and all that we accomplished for the American people,” he followed up.
That record includes a signature tax cut, the strengthening of the U.S. military, and key foreign policy victories. And it was Trump alone who nominated three conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who would be deciding votes in overturning Roe v. Wade and ending federalized protections for abortion.
Pence praised Trump for leading the “most pro-life administration in American history,” while bashing him in the same sentence for “retreating from the cause of the unborn.”
“The sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for half a century-long before Donald Trump was ever a part of it,” Pence said. “Now he treats it as an inconvenience, even blaming election losses on overturning Roe v. Wade.”
Trump earlier this year posted on his social network, Truth Social, that many in the GOP bungled the abortion issue, particularly those who “firmly” stood against exceptions to abortion bans, such as instances of rape and incest.
“Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again,” Trump wrote.
Pence has long been revered by social conservatives. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America issued a statement Wednesday asserting “Mike Pence is the definition of an unapologetic pro-life leader, a long-time friend of unborn children and their mothers.”
“He has always believed ‘life is winning in America‘ and has spent decades working to restore this foundational right in our law – as governor of Indiana, in Congress, and as vice president in the most pro-life administration in history, laying the groundwork for the historic Dobbs victory,” said SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “He understands that science, compassion and the will of the people are on the side of life and that it is the human rights issue of our time.”
A Wall Street Journal Editorial Board column opined that in an alternative universe, Pence might be leading the Republican race for president in 2024.
“His résumé includes 12 years in the House, four as Governor of Indiana, and then four as Vice President, giving wise counsel and needed ballast to a volatile outsider in the Oval Office,” the editorial states.
But in the real world, Pence’s old boss is dominating the crowded field of GOP presidential contenders. Trump is leading his closest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, by 30-plus points. Pence is currently running fourth, at 3.8 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of national Republican presidential primary polls — behind Nikki Haley (4.4 percent), former South Carolina Governor and former ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, and just ahead of Ohio businessman and political outsider Vivek Ramaswamy (2.6 percent). The field includes U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who also launched his campaign on Wednesday.
But the battle for the GOP nomination is many months in the making, and Iowa, with its evangelical Christian base of voters, will be critical for Pence’s prospects. That’s no doubt why he launched here, no doubt why he says he will be spending a lot of time in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.
Elections, Pence said, are about the future. He argues that neither President Joe Biden nor his predecessor is interested in bringing the nation together.
The former vice president is preaching “tough and kind” politics and policies, perhaps harkening back to President George H.W. Bush’s “kinder, gentler America.”
“We need leaders who can distinguish between starting fights and finishing them … between the politics of outrage and standing firm,” Pence said. “As your president, I will not yield an inch in defending America, our people or our values.”
“But I will do so in a way that is consistent with the character of this nation, that restores a threshold of civility to our politics, that rallies Americans to our movement, rather than driving them away.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Mike Pence” by Mike Pence.
