John Hendrickson: Is former Vice President Mike Pence’s view on conservatism correct?
Former Vice President Mike Pence, in a speech before the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College and in an article in The Wall Street Journal, warned Republicans and conservatives about the danger of populism. The former Vice President argues, in echoing Ronald Reagan’s 1964 address, that it is “a time for choosing” for Republicans whether to continue to follow the “siren song” of populism or return to true conservatism. It is clear that Pence is not only drawing a line in the sand and forcing a debate over conservatism, but also distancing himself from former President Donald Trump and those who support his policies. Nevertheless, Pence fails to understand that the conservative populism he is denouncing is actually rooted within the American conservative tradition. Debates within and amongst conservatives is nothing new. The conservative movement contains various “schools of intellectual thought” over what conservatism means and how conservatives should shape public policy. Vice President Pence argues that the Republican Party must return to traditional conservatism. “If we are to defeat Joe Biden and turn America around, the GOP must be the party of limited government, free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and traditional values,” wrote Pence. Pence is defining traditional conservatism based upon the principles of limited government, free enterprise, fiscal responsibility, and traditional values. Further, he correctly notes that individual “rights come from God and nature, not from the state.” In addition, Pence argues that just “like our founders, we know the imperfect nature of men and women and that granting them unlimited power imperils liberty.” This is an important pillar of conservatism, that is, that human nature is flawed because of original sin. Pence is also correct in referencing the need for conservatives to uphold and defend constitutional principles such as federalism. Conservatives would largely agree with Pence’s definition of conservatism, but he only offers a surface view of conservatism. Pence warns about the danger of populism, and he argues that this is a political tool of progressives and he references William Jennings Bryan and the “Kingfish” Huey Long as examples. Further, Pence argues that populists within the Republican Party are a threat to limited government, traditional values, and even the Constitution. Further, these Republican populists favor abandoning “American leadership on the world stage” and “embracing a posture of appeasement in the face of rising threats to freedom.” Pence’s other indictment is that Republican populists are abandoning free enterprise. Is Pence correct that populism is not only wrong, but also rooted in liberalism and progressivism and that these Republican populists are not conservative? First, Pence needs to define what policies of the Trump administration were not conservative. Pence acknowledges that the Trump administration governed as conservatives, but now Trump has abandoned conservatism. Does this mean that the Trump America First agenda was conservative according to Pence? In 2016, President Trump campaigned on what was considered to be a new approach to conservatism. He called for restrictions on immigration, building a border wall to secure the border, a restrained foreign policy, and he was highly critical of free trade and openly called for tariffs to protect manufacturing. This agenda has been referred to as America First, conservative nationalism, and conservative populism. It also fits within the framework of the paleoconservative tradition. Nevertheless, the ideas that shaped President Trump were not new, nor were they a departure from conservatism as former Vice President Pence would suggest. In fact, President Trump was rediscovering an older conservative Republican tradition. As an example, Patrick J. Buchanan wrote that “in leading Republicans away from globalism to economic nationalism, Trump is not writing a new gospel. He is leading a lost party away from a modernist heresy – back to the Old-Time Religion.” Buchanan, during the 1990s, campaigned for the Republican nomination championing similar ideas as Trump. The conservative nationalist tradition can be traced back to the American founding. Specifically, Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists. President Calvin Coolidge even credited Hamilton and the Federalists and later the Whigs as the source of the Republican Party’s heritage. Former Vice President Pence should consider the conservatism of the 1920s. Conservatives such as Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge not only challenged progressives, but their policy agenda was based on conservative nationalism. Harding and Coolidge not only supported a restrained foreign policy, but also protective tariffs and restricting immigration. They also placed an emphasis on limiting government by reducing spending, paying down the national debt, and reducing tax rates. Harding and Coolidge actually reduced government. Vice President Pence appears to be fighting against conservative nationalism and embracing the neoconservative agenda that was embraced by President George W. Bush’s administration. Neoconservatism and the Pence-style of conservatism dominated the Republican Party before Trump. What were the results: a full retreat on the cultural war and traditional values, engaging in costly wars to promote democracy, free trade agreements which led to the devastation of manufacturing, middle-class jobs, and massive trade deficits which led to the rise of China, and uncontrolled immigration. Plus, the federal government, along with the national debt, continued to grow. It was this “traditional” conservatism that idolized and worshiped at the golden alter of democracy and free trade. Is this the conservatism that we want to return to as a nation or a movement? In fact, during the first Republican presidential candidate debate Vice President Pence resembled former President George W. Bush more than President Ronald Reagan, especially in his advocacy of sending more dollars and support to Ukraine. This foreign policy approach, along with free trade, has more in common with progressives such as Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Pence’s approach to Ukraine is Wilsonian. Pence is attempting to proclaim himself as the true heir to Reagan. When examining the legacy of President Reagan too many conservatives forget that Reagan, even with all of the free market and liberty rhetoric, often practiced a restrained foreign policy and implemented trade policies that were considered protectionist. Some even argued that Reagan was the most
Barry Moore says Democrats “have been out to get Trump since he came down the escalator”
On Monday night, former President Donald Trump was indicted by a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury for charges dating back to 2020, accusing the former President and 18 of his attorneys, advisors, and affiliates of conspiring to unlawfully overturn the results of the 2020 election. Congressman Barry Moore (R-AL02) – who has endorsed Trump for President – took to Twitter on Tuesday to denounce the prosecution of Trump and his team. “The United States had never before indicted a former president, and now Biden’s Department of Justice and weaponized blue state prosecutors have indicted President Trump four times in a matter of months,” Moore said on Twitter. As they continue their quest to throw their chief political opponent in jail, Democrats have joined the likes of Maduro and Noriega,” Rep. Moore wrote on Twitter. “They have been out to get President Trump since he came down the escalator, and Americans can see through this desperate sham.” Moore, a member of the House Judiciary Committee that is investigating alleged influence peddling by the President’s son, Hunter Biden, and allegations that Biden himself may have received payoffs from foreign sources while he was Vice President – has suggested that the indictments of Trump are part of a plan by Democrats to distract attention from those hearings. “JUST IN: The Biden family received more than $20 million from oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan while he was VP,” said Moore on Twitter. “Biden dined with these oligarchs and spoke with them on the phone 20 separate times. The indictments are just a distraction from the real story.” Most Republicans dismiss the Trump indictments as partisan politics. U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) called them a “sham” and a “witch hunt” in a statement on Tuesday. Some Trump opponents, on the other hand, claim that he should not be allowed on the ballot due to the legal controversy. William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen claim that by challenging the results of the 2020 election, Trump is guilty of participating in an insurrection between the election and the certification of the Electoral College votes on January 9, 2021, and is thus barred from holding public office under the post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment. Trump has already made history as only the third President in the country’s history to be impeached by the House of Representatives and the only President to be impeached twice. Like Bill Clinton and Andrew Johson before him, Trump was not convicted by the Senate. Trump is the sixth one-term President since 1900 to lose reelection. The others are William Howard Taft in 1912, Herbert Hoover in 1932, Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H. Bush in 1992. If Trump wins the Republican nomination for President and then is elected to a nonconsecutive term in 2024, he would be the first to accomplish that since Grover Cleveland. Moore is serving in his second term representing Alabama’s Second Congressional District. To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email brandonmreporter@gmail.com.
Martin Dyckman: Refusing to approve Obama nominee could hurt the Party of No in November
Mitch McConnell couldn’t even wait until Justice Antonin Scalia‘s corpse was cold before exploiting his death for partisan politics. The oleaginous majority leader means to keep the seat empty, no matter the likelihood of that paralyzing the sharply divided Supreme Court for a year, on the chance that voters might elect a Republican president to appoint Scalia’s replacement. The people, he said, “should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice.” As Elizabeth Warren promptly reminded him, voters had that choice when they elected President Barack Obama and re-elected him four years ago with a winning margin of nearly 5 million votes. Most Americans understand that short of making or preventing war, the appointment of a Supreme Court justice has the longest-lasting consequences of anything a president does. They have trusted Obama with that responsibility. Twice. But the Party of No has never forgiven him for winning and has treated him with degrees of obstructionism and contempt that were never practiced by Democratic Congresses against Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. The scheme of keeping Scalia’s seat empty for a year is consistent with the Party of No having shut down the executive branch to try win with extortion what it couldn’t win at the ballot box — the repeal of Obamacare. Belying the current Republican reinvention of history, there has never been a policy of deliberately perpetuating Supreme Court vacancies on the rare occasions when they occur during the last year of a president’s term. Quite the contrary. Some examples: There were only 10 months left in Reagan’s when the Senate unanimously confirmed Justice Anthony Kennedy, as Reagan urged it to do. John Adams had only four months left in his term when he appointed John Marshall to be chief justice in December 1800. That was easily the most consequential appointment ever. Thomas Jefferson, who had defeated Adams, could do nothing but gnash his teeth over the Federalists’ parting shot. Herbert Hoover was in the last year of his term, and facing all-but-certain defeat in the 1932 election, when he successfully nominated Benjamin Cardozo. When President Lyndon Johnson failed to promote Justice Abe Fortas to chief justice, it wasn’t because of timing but because Fortas had woeful ethical problems. There is nothing in the Constitution to require — or authorize — Congress to wait for an intervening election before carrying out any duty other than counting electoral votes. The 27th amendment merely postpones the effective date of any congressional salary increase until after the ensuing election for the House. That was James Madison‘s idea, 202 years before it was finally ratified, on the premise that lawmakers should think twice about giving themselves a pay raise of which the voters might disapprove. Today, there are Republican senators up for re-election who might want to rethink the McConnell scheme to hold the Supreme Court hostage for the next election. Five of the 17 seats the party is defending are in states, including Florida, which Obama carried four years ago. Obama will fulfill his constitutional duty to nominate a justice even if the Republican senators insist on defaulting on their duty to advise and consent. The voters will then have an opportunity to judge the senators. Two of the people said to be on Obama’s shortlist are circuit court of appeals judges whom the Senate confirmed unanimously two and three years ago. One would be the first Indian-American justice. The other is from Iowa and was enthusiastically supported by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the judiciary committee, who is up for re-election this year. Is Grassley really prepared to stonewall her? Maybe not. He’s now saying he might hold hearings on a nominee although he still thinks the next president should make the appointment. At least the Party of No is making it vividly clear to voters what’s at stake for the Supreme Court — and for the entire concept of equal justice under law — this year. For the first time since Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, a majority of the court might be Democratic appointees. More to the important point, will the new justice be an ideologue like Scalia, or disposed to compromise like Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter, both of whom were Republicans? They were the last justices who had ever held political office — O’Connor as a legislator and Souter as an attorney general — and the court was richer for that experience. The Supreme Court did its greatest work — Brown v. Board of Education comes to mind — when it valued consensus. It has been at its worst — think Citizens United — when an ideological majority insisted on scoring points that weren’t necessary to resolving the case. The American people want a new justice who will be judicious in every sense of the word. If Obama nominates such a person and the Republicans refuse to confirm him or her, it will be as good a reason as any for voters to reject the Party of No on Nov. 8. *** Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the newspaper formerly known as the St. Petersburg Times. He lives in suburban Asheville, North Carolina.
