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.”
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.
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.
The Origins of Conservatism