![]() ![]() Josh Kimbrell of deep-red Spartanburg County, South Carolina, and, like Pence, a former talk show radio host, spent part of 20 guiding him around his early voting state. Still, even some of those allies don’t believe he does. Between that, his wife, Karen, and a tightly knit clutch of loyal advisers, Pence is convinced, allies say, that he has a way forward. After all, he is, they say, the former vice president and should be taken seriously.Īnd then there’s that verse from Jeremiah that’s still in his head. They think he’ll at least get a shake from voters. Just 29 percent had a favorable view of him.īut both Pence and those around him insist they can overcome that - saying he is well known but not known well. An April 2023 poll from The Wall Street Journal found that 60 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of him, up from 54 percent in December. Much of Pence’s campaign is predicated on the idea of reintroducing himself as more than just Trump’s former vice president. But he has the potential for a good showing with that block of voters in Northwest Iowa and elsewhere, but I don’t see him winning the Iowa caucuses.” “But at the end of the day, a lot of what we’ve seen about Pence is that he was disloyal, he could have done more, and that’s in the water, too. “He’s going to get a polite reception from groups like the Faith and Freedom Coalition or Family Leader and these more socially conservative, Christian-oriented political groups,” said David Kochel, the veteran Iowa GOP strategist. Pence, his aides hope, will ultimately emerge from the rubble as a happy warrior who can tout the policy victories of the Trump era - with all of its ideology and none of its id - one who can connect better with voters in grassroots setting better than the top two candidates, particularly in all 99 Iowa counties aides say he’ll visit at least once.īut that’s a lot of hope on which to rest a candidacy. It goes like this: Trump and DeSantis cancel each other out in a murder-suicide pact, and Pence steals the evangelical vote in Iowa away from them both, as well as Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, who are vying for the same slice of caucus-goers. Pence’s theory of the case is based on a mix of divine intervention and a Rube Goldberg machine-like series of events. It was during that latter cycle that Trump plucked him from the Midwest to be his running mate, saving him a tough reelection battle. And for more than a decade, Pence has had his eye on the White House, eschewing potential campaigns in 20. Bush and John Boehner before Boehner brought him to heel as the chair of the Republican Study Committee. ![]() Mike Pence’s campaign is an ideological rescue mission as much as it is a political one: He is running, he has said, to restore the soul of traditional economic and foreign policy conservatism.įor years, Pence prided himself in having his finger on the pulse of the conservative movement - “I was Tea Party before it was cool,” he once said - a bomb-throwing talking head on Fox News crusading against the likes of George W. “When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016 he promised to govern as a conservative,” Pence said. In an often sunny speech dripping with references to Ronald Reagan and scripture at a Future Farmers of America Enrichment Center here, Pence introduced himself to voters as a pre-Trump conservative on issues ranging from foreign policy to abortion rights. That doesn’t mean he does not consider it. He’s probably paying more attention to that than he is any polling. “He’s talking to his wife, and he’s reading the Bible, and he’s praying about it and trying to figure out if this is what God wants him to do. “He doesn’t have the same measuring stick,” said Mike Murphy, a longtime friend and former neighbor of Pence. He, like other true Pence believers, thinks the race is more wide open than conventional wisdom suggests. He said the campaign would be the “least poll-tested campaign,” and sloughed off Pence’s current position in the field. Marc Short, Pence’s longtime confidant, teared up as he stood in the back of the room as Pence talked of Jan. ![]() Our voters will be faced with the same choice. In his announcement speech, Pence said that “the American people deserve to know that on, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. But Pence, with his announcement here and a trip to New Hampshire planned for Friday, is plowing ahead anyway in a primary where his rivals regard him as so little a threat that virtually none of them have yet criticized him by name. ![]()
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