You’d think a former VP would support the top of his ticket if he ended up winning the Republican nomination, but Pence apparently doesn’t want to make any commitments just yet.
Now he may be running for president himself but even so, it’s not hard to say that if Trump wins the nomination he’d support him.
But that’s exactly what he didn’t do according to CBS News. Twice.
Former Vice President Mike Pence still won’t say whether he’s running for president next year, and he won’t speak ill of his ex-boss, former President Donald Trump. But in an interview with CBS News in Michigan on Wednesday, he also twice declined to commit to supporting Trump if he is the Republican presidential nominee.
Instead, Pence said he believes voters in 2024 will choose “wisely again,” as they did in 2016. But said he thinks “different times call for different leadership.”
“I’m very confident we’ll have better choices come 2024,” he told CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns. “And I’m confident our standard-bearer will win the day in November of that year.”
But if Pence does run, he’s offering a vision of conservative principles and Trump-era like policies — without the Trump-era personality. The former vice president said his message in a speech to young voters in Michigan Wednesday was to “resist the temptation of focusing on personalities or embracing a populism unmoored to conservative principle.”
“You know, I joined the Republican Party in the days of Ronald Reagan, and I really believe that the conservative movement has always been animated by ideas,” Pence said. “We’ve had big personalities, from Reagan all the way to Donald Trump. But I think it’s the ideas — of commitment to a strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, limited government and traditional values — that really I think created this movement in many ways and I think they still sustain it.”
Pence said recently that he would make a decision on whether to run by “this spring,” which now is just weeks away. On Wednesday, Pence said he and his wife, Karen, would continue to listen to the American people and should have a clear sense of whether he should run by this spring.
It shouldn’t be hard for any candidate to say they’d support any of the other potential or actual candidates if they win the Republican nomination. I mean, what’s the alternative? Support Joe Biden??
I’ll just add that I used to like Pence a lot. Things happened in Indiana that weren’t great, but I really lost respect for him when he made that deal to endorse Trump in 2016 and be his running mate instead of endorsing Ted Cruz, the more conservative candidate. Of course I was a Ted Cruz supporter at the time, but it just seemed he and Pence aligned as conservatives on many more issues than Pence and Trump.
In the spirit of election talk, here’s something Bill Maher said today on the topic. Yes I know, it’s Bill Maher. But he makes an interesting point nonetheless. You don’t have to watch the entire video, just the beginning:
Bill Maher – who has made numerous correct predictions on Trump – says that only Ron DeSantis can beat Trump and that he will beat Trump if there’s a small number of candidates running.
He says Haley, Pence, Pompeo, and others will hand the nomination to Trump if they all run. pic.twitter.com/TTZCuqQ6xY
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 1, 2023
This makes me wonder if DeSantis will wait to see how crowded the field gets before announcing. He’s already suggested it will be later this year before he decides. And if he feels it’s too crowded and that it might hurt him against Trump, maybe he doesn’t run in 2024 at all.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens, but if he does run in a crowded field I am afraid Maher could be right.