Mike Pence Claims the Reagan Mantle. So Far, It Isn't Helping Him.

"Our party does face a time for choosing," said the former vice president last night.

In 2015, when GOP presidential contenders took the stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, the 40th president's legacy loomed large. Debaters mentioned Reagan nearly four dozen times, according to Fortune.

Eight years later, the Gipper's reputation has taken a beating in some quarters. The illiberal right treats "Zombie Reaganite" as a go-to insult for old-school conservatives and libertarians, deriding the Reaganesque emphasis on free markets, limited government, and "peace through strength" as quaint at best. The GOP is "probably more of a Trump party" than a Reagan party at this point, one attendee of a soiree at the Reagan Library told Politico a couple of weeks ago.

Nonetheless, former Vice President Mike Pence has made it clear that he believes GOP primary voters still have an appetite for a candidate in the Reagan mold. At the second primary debate of the season last night, also held at the Reagan Library, he defended "the conservative agenda that Ronald Reagan brought forward in this party, of a strong national defense, standing with our allies, standing up to our enemies, supporting limited government and traditional values." 

"Frankly, our party does face a time for choosing," he said, referring to an iconic speech delivered by Reagan at the 1964 Republican National Convention. It's a choice of "whether we're going to stand on the foundation of that conservative agenda that Ronald Reagan poured, or whether we're going to follow the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles."

Earlier this week, four former Reagan administration officials, including former Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, released an open letter "wholeheartedly" endorsing Pence as the "candidate who embodies the spirit and principles of Ronald Reagan." 

Republican voters are, in fact, slightly more likely to name Reagan than Donald Trump as the best recent president, according to Pew. In June, Gallup found that Reagan enjoys a 69 percent approval rating overall, more than 20 points higher than Trump's.

For all that, of course, it's Trump who is dominating the primary field. Pence is currently in fifth place, with less than 5 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Republican voters still love the idea of Reagan, but at a moment when culture war concerns seem to rule, their preference in 2024 may be for an angry warrior over a happy one.

Comments

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

He could wrap himself in the Shroud of Turin, still would wouldn't help him.

[Wizard4169]

A weasel wrapped in a fraud? Works for me.

[Brandybuck]

> the Reagan Mantle. So Far, It Isn't Helping Him.

Well duh! The modern conservative movement loves Reagan as a symbol, but if he were around today he would be vilified as RINO and anti-Trumper. He was a conservative in the old sense of the word, and not a populist.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

He was a conservative in the old sense of the word, and not a populist.

Oh, bullshit–people say this crap and shows how little they actually know about American political history.

Reagan had long tapped into GOP voter populism going back to his alignment with the Goldwater faction of the party that were largely concentrated in the western US, and their struggle with the GOP’s northeastern Brahmins. He was considered the populist candidate against the stodgy, go-along-to-get-along compromisers of the party’s establishment in the 1970s, who echoed the left’s assertions that he was a shoot-from-the-hip cowboy and an unserious politician. They didn’t become Reaganites until he waxed Mondale and it was obvious that supporting him wasn’t a political liability anymore, as the party had gotten absolutely stomped in the 1982 midterms. Before that, they were fucking terrified of him specifically because of his populist appeal (something the current center-right has either forgotten or conveniently ignored).

The issue isn’t that Reagan wasn’t a populist; the issue is that the neocons took over the party’s establishment and promoted a fun-house mirror version of Reagan’s political agenda that placed fiscal and military concerns over any sort of cultural issues, designating them as unimportant to the nation’s daily management because they assumed the status quo there would never change–such as assuming that college graduates would always prefer the GOP, for example, even while the neo-marxists in academia were aggressively pushing a rad-left social environment that was necessary to adapt to in order to gain the status symbol of a degree.

Like the current center-right Lilliputs running for President, they benefitted from Reagan presiding over a time period when conservatives still occupied cultural institutions in large enough numbers to moderate the left’s entryism, and thought these were self-perpetuating mechanisms that could be managed by simply “voting,” as opposed to be actively engaged in those institutions. But this idea that Reagan wasn’t a populist is sheer revisionist fiction. The GOP establishment preferred Bush or John Anderson, not Reagan.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I'll add on to this by saying that Nixon was not a populist despite being from California. The "Silent Majority" was also largely fiction.

The main reason he won in 68 and 72 was because the Democrats had become so fucking awful with the New Left's ascendancy in the party--with the constant violent protests, support for criminal and anti-social behavior, non-stop slagging of the country, and tacit support for the domestic terrorism of Weather Underground and other splinter cell groups--that people who might normally have been sympathetic to their policies were completely turned off by their cultural retardation and voted Republican in response.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

Exactly. And in many ways, Trump tapped into that same vein that Reagan did, and the same struggle with the same Brahmins of the party, with, oddly enough, the same neocons. At least the neocons went where they're wanted, the ironically-named Democratic Party.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

And it's notable that those northeasterners are nearly all Democrats now, specifically because they support social leftism. It's not a coincidence that Lincoln Chaffee, Arlen Specter, and Jim Jeffords are all from the northeast.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Also, John Anderson was the original “No Labels” candidate that the center-right is stupidly trying to revive, sharing the same "campaign of ideas" pretense these idiots like to indulge in.

[Bill Dalasio]

The "old sense of the word" conservatism you reference dates only to the 1950s and William F. Buckley's and National Review's acceptance of progressivism in the name of fighting Soviet communism. Donald Trump did the world a favor by disposing of its carcass. It had descended to the Washington Generals of American politics.

[nobody 2]

Patrick Swayze in "Point Break" was more convincing as Reagan than Mike Pence is.

[Dillinger]

lolz. he's not coming back.

[Naime Bond]

'...their preference in 2024 may be for an angry warrior over a happy one. ...' infers Pence is a warrior, which is absurd.

[Social Justice is neither]

Champion of the left perhaps but I'm not seeing how that appeals to conservatives.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Who?!!

[Dillinger]

>>Mike Pence Claims the Reagan Mantle.

anyone can claim.

[Jerryskids]

Interesting that Pence has to harken back to Reagan - what's wrong with being a Bush Republican or a Dole Republican or a McCain Republican or a Romney Republican? Just look at where we are now as a nation and think of Anton Chigurh. "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?" FYTW isn't a one way street any more.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

Nonetheless, former Vice President Mike Pence has made it clear that he believes GOP primary voters still have an appetite for a candidate in the Reagan mold.

They are and they do. He's called Trump.

What Pence conveniently forgets is that Reagan presented a vision, and didn't back down when Democrats attacked him. Reagan also participated in the so-called "culture war". I've seen Ronald W. Reagan, and Mike Pence is no Ronald Reagan.

[TJJ2000]

^^^ THIS ^^^

[sarcasmic]

https://www.cato.org/commentary/reagan-embraced-free-trade-immigration

If Reagan were a candidate today the Trumpians would excoriate him for supporting free trade and immigration.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

If we're talking Reagan the candidate in 1980, he'd be compared more directly to Trump, especially on the populism. Cato forgets.

[sarcasmic]

They were talking about policy, not populism.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

If the GOP establishment thought Reagan wasn't a populist candidate, they would'nt have been so terrified of his popularity in 1976 and 1980.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

People forget that the Romney Rockefeller Northeastern Republicans HATED Reagan because of his appeal to the dirty working class.

[Dillinger]

41 was Reagan's "keep watch over Reagan" Pence

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I don't think it was that, so much as it was his unapologetic American nationalism and clear break from the northeasterners' desire to maintain existing popular government programs. That Reagan largely failed to actually pare the government down much (which didn't really happen until Gingrich and Clinton decided to work on ways to do that) is more of a testament to how entrenched both the programs and the northeasterners were in the party's power structure.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

We need a DeLorean with a flux capacitor just so you can go back and understand. The GOPe of the time liked Reagan about as much as they like Trump now, and for the same populist reasons.

[Public Entelectual]

No one could mistake Pence for Reagan.
Reagan read books.

[Bill Dalasio]

Ronald Reagan left office approximately 35 years ago. Running on being Reagan is roughly equivalent to Ronald Reagan running on being Wendell Wilkie in his 1980 run. The world's moved on and the challenges we face in 2023 are a different set than we faced when Reagan was running for...well...anything. Oh, and Mike, you might want to check how your warmongering over Ukraine squares with the Weinberger Doctrine.

Conservatism Inc is dead. Donald Trump pulled the plug on it. The question is what takes its place?

[sarcasmic]

I was wondering what he meant when he said things like this.

“It makes one wonder about the illegal alien fuss. Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal alien invasion or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won’t do?” Reagan asked. “One thing is certain in this hungry world; no regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters.”

Or this.

“I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God‐​blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here.”

Thanks for the clarification. Must have been Opposite Day.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I can understand Reagan conflating the City of Man with the City of God, but that's a mistake the Puritans made, too.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

I wonder what Reagan's answer would have been had you asked him, "Mr. President, would your free healthcare plan be extended to illegal immigrants?"

I wonder what White Supremacist Barbara Jordan might have said?

[Wizard4169]

The biggest favor Trump ever did me was getting Pence out of Indiana.