Trump’s former vice president also called the administration’s “anti-weaponization” fund “deeply offensive.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s second administration has “departed” from traditional conservative principles.
Pence, who served as Trump’s vice president from 2017 to 2021, told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that the administration is no longer committed to “the conservative agenda that has defined the Republican Party since the days of Ronald Reagan, and before that an agenda of American leadership, limited government, free market economics, the right to life.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s second administration has “departed” from traditional conservative principles.
Not like the first administration was any better Mike. But nice job trying to give yourself political cover for your blame in what has happened to this country over the last ~10 years. You might have done the right thing in the end, but you had a good 3.5 years before that to stiffen that back bone up and you didn’t until you saw the literal gallows sitting outside the senate offices.
Conservatives had principles? Weird, it never felt like this was the case…
The entire Republican party has departed from morals, principles, ethics, civility, decorum, decency and the law
Pity he wasn’t hanged.
He’s just noticing this now? He didn’t notice this when a mob of them erected a scaffold, carried signs that stated their intention to hang him, and stormed the building he was in?
It’s like all thosecronies who only came out against him after Jan 6…most of which flipped back into his court by 2023
I think those might actually be conservative principles at work…
He was actually super proud. Reminded him of the good old days.
I saw that interview, and he’s always been an arrogant, out-of-touch religious whackjob, but now you can add pathetic to the list.
He still thinks he can convince drooling MAGAs to follow him on his quest to return to Core Conservative Principles, but he didn’t do it by explaining what Core Conservative Principles are, and how MAGA doesn’t respect them. He just went right to spewing the same old tired Conservative Propaganda Machine tropes about left-wing radicals, gender, blah, blah, blah, it’s so boring.
He hasn’t realized something that everybody on the outside knows: The Republican Party is dead. That was just the larval stage before it morphed into their final form - MAGA. Anybody who would buy into his lame old list of conservative whines, has already turned MAGA, and they ain’t coming back.
And MAGA literally tried to murder him. Yet instead of attacking them, and showing the right how MAGA is wrong for the party, America, and the World, and they need to return to true Conservatism, he just attacks Democrats with the same old MAGA complaints they’ve always had. It turns out righties actually wanted something other that a smaller government and lower taxes, they wanted to indulge their hatred even more, and that feels GOOD. Why should they support Pence, when they are already supporting someone who is following through with what they truly want?
On the positive side, a return to Core Conservative Principles would create a completely separate party from MAGA, and I strongly encourage him to do that. He can take all the Righties who want to go back to the good old days of Reagan, and Trump can get all the MAGAs, and we can have a 3 Party system, with the right wing split between the Sociopaths, and the Psychopaths.
Democrats: “Oh thank God for this new party, I was worried I’d have to vote for a progressive!”
Republicans are so dumb
I wish this concept would die. The republicans who are in power, are doing exactly what they planned (project2025) by destroying the idea and function of a democratic working government for the people, grifting without consequences all along the way. Since that was the goal and its being achieved, they are HIGHLY SKILLFUL opponents who are currently winning. This makes everyone else spectating, wondering when things are going to be made right, the dumb ones. And its the second term. He is not in prison. HES THE PRESIDENT, again. As it is now, they outsmarted everyone, no matter how much that hurts the feelings of the spectators.
They aren’t smart, not even a little bit, they’re just playing on easy mode. There is nothing clever about what they’re doing, and in fact it’s pretty easy to grasp and is often incredibly public. The reason they keep winning anyway is because the citizens are lazy and ignorant, and most of the US are dumb as rocks even if they’re “educated”. Most people in general aren’t even that bright, it’s insane what they will fall for.
Not so much about being smarter/more skilled as it is about being shameless vermin willing to exploit, cheat, lie…their way through any barrier imaginable. It’s just a massive handicap fighting these demons “the right way”.
i don’t disagree, yet their goals are being met. They are normalizing this behavior globally. Surveillance state is set with full government support. Americans are no longer in Kansas.
This is what you guys wanted, this was your end game for decades now. You’re just mad it wasn’t someone more savvy so as not to fuck over everything at once.
Imagine if someone tried to have you murdered by a mob and this was the harshest criticism you could come up with.
Tumor complains that stage 4 cancer has “departed” from malignant principles.
Plenty of people have cancer and don’t die. You’re suggesting we wipe out the entire deep human experience of having cancer, including the whole cancer subculture. Don’t you think that’s a bit ignorant?
The Gilead faction is the true one and not the Reich faction?
Yeah, sure, OK, but I still wish a plague on both their houses.
Has departed… Bitch, it never had those values, you gotta have values to depart from them.
I think they had them perfectly, just now some of the supporters realized they don’t want to be part of sunken ship.
No shit, he noticed this now
The only thing he’s noticing is the hype train to try and stay relevant.
He’s wrong, of course. Trump is the purest expression of conservative principles we’ve ever seen.
Reactionary, exclusionary, hateful. What higher conservative principles are there right?
Corrupt?
That’s all big tent stuff. If you really look at the core, foundational, pillar of conservatism- it’s protectionism. The “fuck you I got mine,” principle. Ensuring the status quo for wealth holders.
That would fall under exclusionary. But you’re not wrong. Sad thing is they lie to their voters and tell them that they will be part of the in group. As they proceed to exclude them over and over and over again.
@Eldritch (Sexual) slave trader ?
Not all of them, but far too many to be a coincidence for sure.
Trump says all the quiet things out loud. The things you’d hear at the country club and black tie events. Things that Mike Pence thinks but won’t say out loud, even though most of his conservative brethren have been since Trump made it acceptable.
He’s such a fascinating paradox. He’s pure id, so he lies constantly, but he also constantly blurts out the truth because he’s too stupid to know when it’s a smart time to lie and when it’s a smart time to shut the fuck up.
He’s banking on, and probably mildly correct, that there’s voters who want to go back to that era and like MTG, want to distance themselves from Trump and his methods but not the power/results. He’ll never get anywhere though. They’ve sold their souls 3x to support Trump and will again rather than risk splitting conservatism and creating openings for opposition to win.
Trump brand conservatism appeals to everyone from Boomers yearning for a return to the privilege of mid-century America to Gen Zs who think mid-century America was the Golden Age it’s said to be and that they’ve been denied. Nobody wants a polite, stick-up-his-ass, Victorian sensibility patriarch that has the personality of wet cardboard.
Took “I got mine” to the next level.
He’s unpopular, which Republicans will insist means he’s not conservative enough
He’s the purest representation of right-wing principles we have seen. That’s not the same thing as conservative. A conservative position opposes all change - including change to the right. So I’d say that Pence is right.
If anything, the Democrats are the more conservative party right now, and the MAGA Republicans are trying to move the country further to the right. I still don’t think that a conservative position is good, but it’s better than a fascist position.
This has never been what “conservative” means in practice. You can go right back to the father of Conservativism, Edmund Burke, and you’ll find a consistent pattern of being gleefully willing to destroy and tear down anything that gets in the way of their core goal; preventing the enfranchisement of the disenfranchised.
preventing the enfranchisement of the disenfranchised
And as a corollary of that, staunchly defending unaccountable privilege. It wasn’t just the lower orders getting a voice that scared them, it was the possibility that rule of law and meritocracy would disrupt their long-running gravy trains.
No, that’s just a lie conservatives tell to whitewash their abhorrent worldview.
Have they? They have started doing it with no deception. They are just doing the bad stuff and not trying to hide it. Regressives have always said one thing and done another. Now they are just doing the hateful stuff without any speed bumps.
