Sept. 6 (UPI) — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday warned Republicans against choosing populism championed by former President Donald Trump and his acolytes over traditional conservatism.
Pence, who is running against his former boss for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential primaries, told the GOP during a speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College to resist “the siren song of populism.”
“Donald Trump, along with his populist followers and imitators — some of whom are also seeking the Republican presidential nomination — often sound like an echo of the progressive they would replace in the White House,” Pence said in the speech, according to ABC News.
“Like progressives, the Republican populists insist government should dictate how private businesses operate. The governor of Florida even used the power of the state to punish corporations for taking a political stand he disagreed with.”
Pence said that populists were replacing conservative values with “personal grievances and performative outrage,” in what CNN called his sharpest language to date against Trumpian Republicans.
“When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to govern as a conservative. And together, we did just that,” Pence said in his speech. “But it’s important for Republicans to know that he and his imitators in this Republican primary make no such promise today.”
Pence further went on the offensive, stating that the Republican Party did not begin on a golden escalator in 2015, a reference to the day Trump first announced he would run for president ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Advisers to Pence told CNN that his views on the matter also apply to politicians such as Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley who have populist views but position themselves as traditional conservatives.
“Which might be even more dangerous,” a Pence adviser said on the Tuesday call with reporters, “because it seems like it’s pandering.”