Former Vice President Mike Pence is creating a new conservative organization that will defend the principle that conservatism “is bigger than any one moment, election, or person,” RealClearPolitics reports.
Part of Pence's platform while a candidate for president was his warning against “unprincipled populism.” He never got any traction with it but he's expanded the notion as part of the mission of his group Advancing American Freedom, as it launched what it calls the “American Solutions Project.”
“Our nation was founded on conservative principles that have stood the test of time. The Constitution and this great American experiment must not be swayed by movements or personalities, but must hold fast to the time-honored principles that have made America strong and prosperous and free,” Pence said in a statement to RCP.
Without naming names, Pence said, “Many in the conservative movement have walked away from these principles, chasing the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles.”
“There is a void in our movement currently for traditional conservatives,” said Marc Short, who worked as the vice president’s chief of staff, “and many of our flagship organizations have walked away from those principles.”
The agenda of the group is certainly ambitious.
The Republican party, and the conservative movement more generally, Short continued, have moved past the old law-and-order rejoinder to adopt an ideology that “promotes rule of man over rule of law.”
Among intellectuals on the right, there was a concerted effort to graft established conservative orthodoxy with the nascent, often changing, ideology of Trump. For his part, Pence served as a sort of in-house conservative conscience, pushing his boss to the right on policy. Since the Jan. 6 riot, however, the two men have gone their separate ways. Trump, and the movement he leads, are increasingly unbound from the kind of conservatism Pence represents.
Despite the Trump-Pence divorce, the AAF group will work with candidates and legislators on a gambit of domestic and international policy issues from “reining in the federal government” and “unleashing American energy dominance” to “promoting free trade with free nations” and “defeating the Chinese communist party.”
Pence's group will also look to restore U.S. global leadership. To him, that means avoiding “a future of isolation and appeasement” and continuing to “support our partners in Ukraine and Israel in a fiscally responsible manner.”
Pence is not the best man to deliver this message. He's in bad odor with MAGA world for any number of reasons. And secular conservatives might not appreciate his deeply held religious beliefs animating much of his conservatism. He's an "old-school conservative" who advocates for timeless and immutable conservative principles.
But his message may resonate with the non-Trumpian wing of the Republican Party, as small as that is.
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