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 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