The Repeal of Reaganism
Mike Pence’s refusal to endorse Trump may do more to consolidate the transformation of the GOP into a vehicle for right-wing populism than it will to scuttle the party’s chances in November
For those of us who very much want to see Donald Trump defeated in November by the widest possible margin, news on Friday afternoon that former Vice President Mike Pence would not be endorsing his former boss seemed encouraging. Not that Pence commands a large faction of voters. Given that he dropped out of the presidential race late last year after failing to rise above the lower single digits, there’s no reason to assume that he does. Still, every prominent, normie Republican who rejects Trump moves us further down the road.
But toward what?
A lot of my Never Trump allies on the center-right feel sure that Pence refusing to endorse the man he served for four years points the way (or “creates a permission structure”) for Republican voters to abandon the former president. By joining Nikki Haley, Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, William Barr, Mark Esper, John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney, John Coats, John Bolton, H.R. McMaster, Liz Cheney, and a long list of additional Cabinet members, present and former GOP members of Congress, and state officials in opposing Trump’s bid to become president again, Pence supposedly helps to guarantee his loss in November.
But is this really true? I’m quite willing to believe some measurable number of Reaganite Republicans may be persuaded to stay home, or to vote for someone other than Trump, on Election Day. But this will only doom Trump’s chances if he fails to pick up support from different sorts of voters to replace the ones he loses from the (former) GOP mainstream. Is it possible that the very act of Reagan-Bush-era Republicans distancing themselves from Trump could burnish the former president’s credentials as a man seeking to transform his party in a populist direction?
Two Republican Dispensations
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