Mike Pence and the Republican Future

The plan was for Mike Pence to announce his “Freedom Agenda” in a speech to the Heritage Foundation in late July. But the weather had other ideas. Summer thunderstorms forced Pence to cancel. The talk was rescheduled for, and delivered on, October 19. Coming three weeks before the midterm election, with GOP candidates gaining strength in polls, the former vice president’s remarks had a force and significance that they might have lacked three months ago. Pence grasped the meaning of the moment. “Maybe it’s what we call in my house ‘God’s timing,’” he told the audience.

And God’s timing is good. Pence’s speech deserves a listen not just for its content but for its framing. As Republicans march toward victory in November, Pence laid out the stakes for his party next year and beyond. Conservatism, he suggested, has reached an impasse. Will the Right continue to promote freedom, constitutionalism, and American leadership abroad? Or will it take off in a different direction, toward centralized authority, arbitrary power, and global retrenchment?

Pence doesn’t believe the future of the Right is an either/or question. He said that the Trump administration—or, as Pence likes to say, the “Trump-Pence administration”—was a synthesis between Reagan conservatism and Trump populism. He pointed to immigration, trade, and China as places where Trump populism modified Reagan conservatism in ways that brought the priorities of Republican officials into alignment with the sentiments of the Republican base. Pence welcomed these changes. But he also cautioned that conservatism should not be abandoned at the first sign of populist discontent. “We need to chart a course that doesn’t veer off too far in either direction,” he said. He warned conservatives not to fall for “the siren song of unprincipled populism” that could lead them to abandon longstanding values such as limited government, free enterprise, and the rule of law. And he cast his lot with the Reagan conservative vision of America as the shining city on the hill.

Pence remains an enemy of big government. He urged a hypothetical Republican Congress to stop and reverse President Joe Biden’s spending, and to use the “power of the purse” to force the administration to secure the southern border. His “Freedom Agenda” puts culture first, emphasizing the pro-life cause, defending women’s sports from transgenderism, and banning Critical Race Theory from America’s classrooms. Economics comes next, with Pence calling for the extension of the Trump tax