Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,
To listen to the chatter of the Important People, you would think that a “decent and elevated conservatism”™ was about to return, has returned, or is just about to triumph in the person of—cue the drum roll—Mike Pence, former vice president and perpetual Mr. Goody Two-Shoes.
Yes, that’s right, because a baker’s dozen of less-than-fully gruntled employees of the Heritage Foundation decamped to Pence’s “Advancing American Freedom” sandbox, we are supposed to believe—at least, we are supposed to say—that a “Reorganization of the Conservative Movement” is underway.
What do you think?
Does the mutiny at the Heritage Foundation signal a “significant shift within the American right?” Or is it just the familiar anti-Trump palaver we’ve been used to since the media’s “loud and troublesome insects of the hour” began each day by announcing (praying?) that “the walls are closing in” on Donald Trump?
I think it’s the latter. I think so, in part, because Mike “Mr. Morality” Pence is a political non-entity and in part because the colossus he faces is not the Heritage Foundation but his old boss, Donald Trump.
These days, any mention of the Heritage Foundation or its president, Kevin Roberts, acts like a ringing bell before the canines of Ivan Pavlov. Instead of salivating, susceptible souls start shouting “Tucker Carlson.” I have written about that melodrama a couple of times—here, for example, and here. I don’t really have more to add about that controversy beyond acknowledging that I like it better when conservatives train their fire on leftists rather than on one another. Perhaps the motto “no enemies on the right” is deficient as a matter of principle. As a matter of practical politics, however, there is a lot to be said for it.
In any event, it has been amusing to watch Mike Pence pretend that he might become the new standard-bearer for that “decent and elevated conservatism” I mentioned above. The line comes from Bill Kristol, who, in 2019, insisted that Donald Trump was destroying the “decent and elevated conservatism” embodied by, well, by Bill Kristol, of course. MAGA is so naff, so infra dignitatem, so populist. Imagine wanting to make life better for Americans rather than consigning them to drug-sodden poverty at home or the holocaust of foreign wars. Mike Pence has a satchel full of edifying clichés he is fond of dispensing. They didn’t do much for his disastrous and short-lived presidential campaign in the 2024 election cycle. That started in June 2023 and ended a few months later in October, not with a bang nor even a whimper. It just collapsed. Among many cringeworthy moments, perhaps the cringiest was when, having demanded that we send more tanks to Ukraine, Pence said that the sorry state of most American cities was “not my concern.” I suppose that was the elevated thing to say. It was not the vote-getting thing to say.
Meanwhile, as Pence looks forward to a lifetime of losing gracefully and basks in the warm glow of moral indignation, Donald Trump has been busy actually doing things.
People in Pence’s orbit, and Pence himself, have suggested that Trump’s MAGA agenda is old news, that it has run its course, and that it needs to be retired for something more decent and more elevated. The great Don Surber reminded us recently that the beautiful people in the media and in the know have been predicting “Peak Trump” at least since the moment he rode down the elevator in Trump Tower to announce his bid for the presidency in 2015.
I hate to crash that party, but it is worth noting that Donald Trump has yet to pass the one-year mark of his current four-year term.
In that brief time, he has sealed the southern border, overseen the deportation (self- and assisted-) of more than two million illegal immigrants, and dismantled the insidious racist institution of DEI. He is in the process of destroying the archipelago headquarters of the Teachers Union, also known as the Department of Education, and those bits of the EPA that are concerned more with virtue signaling than with maintaining clean air and water. He has also begun the long process of defunding the international empire of Democrat satellites, the myriad of so-called “Non-Governmental Organizations,” which turn out on closer inspection to be semi-camouflaged proxies for the progressive agenda. Then there are little things like brokering peace in the Middle East, destroying ISIS, and stanching the flow of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into the U.S.
On the debit side, I suppose we could list making our European allies angry by pointing out that their Orwellian culture of censorship (free speech, said the head of the EU, is a “virus” that requires the “vaccine” of censorship) together with their importation of millions of Islamic migrants from the Third World is a recipe for “civilizational erasure.” How indelicate of Trump to mention that—almost as indelicate as denying visas to EU bureaucrats who attempt to censor or fine U.S. individuals and businesses.
Meanwhile, Trump has flooded the economy with trillions of dollars of foreign investment and ramped up domestic energy production. We were warned that Trump’s populist policies would precipitate economic disaster. It hasn’t worked out that way. Just a few days ago, the news broke that growth for the third quarter of this year was an astonishing 4.3%, while inflation, predicted to be over 3 percent, came in at 2.7 percent.
People have been complaining about “affordability.” Trump has been effective in addressing that, too. Travel in the U.S. is way up. Why? Because the cost of energy is way down. Gas prices, a typical headline reads, “fall to four-year lows as millions embark on holiday road trips.” Rents are falling, private sector employment for Americans is up, and the trade deficit is half what it was under Biden.
Then there is crime. Trump’s decision to send the National Guard into various violent, dysfunctional cities put many knickers in a twist. But last week we learned that the murder rate through October had dropped nearly 20 percent compared to 2024, the biggest one-year drop ever. And it wasn’t only the murder rate that Trump’s policies have trimmed. Robberies are down 18.3 percent, vehicle thefts 23.2 percent, and overall violent crime more than 10 percent. As Elon Musk put it, “Removing murderers from the streets works wonders.”
Notwithstanding the anti-Trump Casandras, the Mike Pence Show is a limited-run engagement in an off-off-off Broadway venue patronized mostly by people like Bill Kristol and various disaffected policy lemmings. The New York Times, CNN, and Politico will continue to attend to the headlines on their marquee. Denizens of the deep state will applaud. But the main stage belongs to Donald Trump, internecine squabbles notwithstanding.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
Loading recommendations…
