Mike Pence Seems to Think Being a Conservative Means Letting the Left Get Away With Everything
In this era of deep crisis and division in America, Mike Pence wants to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States in 2024, and he wants you to know that a Pence presidency (The Pencidency, you heard it here first) would be a comforting reassertion of the Republican Party’s familiar role as the placid, country-clubbing controlled opposition, never rocking the boat as the Left sets the agenda politically, economically, culturally, and in every other way.
If you want solid, stolid, poker-faced, self-righteous impotence and me-tooism, Mike Pence is your man. Solid, stolid Pence reinforced that perception Wednesday when he called out Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) for being so un-conservative as to do something actually to resist the Left and stop it in its tracks. Good, solid, colorless Men of the Right such as Mike Pence just don’t do such things.
Pence began by defending DeSantis’ Parental Rights in Education bill, which endeavors to stop the grooming of children in primary schools. The former vice president declared that he “fully supported Florida’s initiative to protect kids and protect parental rights.” He even offered an example of why such a bill was needed: “I was just in Iowa last week where literally there’s a school — the Linn-Mar Community School — [that] will allow a student to get a gender transition plan without parental notification or approval.” That’s ghastly indeed, and it’s good to see Pence speaking out against it. But don’t take that to mean that once The Pencidency was up and running Gray Mike would do anything actually effective.
Pence went on to hit DeSantis for going too far: “I have concerns about the follow-on. Disney stepped into the fray; they lost. The idea of going after their taxing authority. That was beyond the scope of what I, as a conservative, a limited-government Republican, would be prepared to do.” Of course. As everyone knows, being a conservative, limited-government Republican means being a dutiful lapdog for the Left. It never, ever means taking on Leftist power centers such as Disney that are corrupting children on an industrial scale with woke propaganda. Oh, no. That would be Big Government Liberalism.
Pence is now the second Republican presidential hopeful to invoke conservatism in order to justify impotence and inaction in the face of the Left’s increasingly open lust to corrupt our children. On Sunday, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, who also shares Pence’s fantasies about being the GOP nominee for president in 2024, brought up his alleged conservative credentials to explain his opposition to DeSantis.
Unlike Pence, Hogan came out entirely against the Parental Rights in Education bill but did so for reasons that Pence would find compelling: “I’m a small government, common sense conservative,” Hogan said, “and to me, it sounds like big government and authoritarian, ‘You have to agree with me, and I’ll tell you what you can and can’t do.’ But it’s an issue. It’s not the most important issue. Most people are worried about the economy, inflation, and they’re concerned about crime, but education is one of the things that we’ve got to talk about.”
Related: Pence Claims Trump’s Words on Jan. 6 ‘Endangered Me and My Family’
Pence and Hogan should understand, after all their years in government and especially in light of the Left’s increasing aggressiveness in the culture wars, that passively going along with the Left’s agenda because to do otherwise would somehow be a manifestation of “big government” is not the kind of conservativism that anyone wants. If it proves to be a winning formula for 2024, then the Republican Party is done for, and genuine patriots should abandon the rotting shell.
There is nothing that stands in opposition to small-government principles in acting to protect children from sexualization and gender madness. There is nothing “big government” about acting to preserve parents’ rights to raise their own children without government bureaucrats using taxpayer money to erode those rights. There is nothing about preserving the principle of limited government in taking away special legal perks that alleged entertainers have received from the government once they start behaving as arrogant social engineers and forcing upon children an agenda that most parents find abhorrent.
Mike Pence is yesterday’s man. He stands for a bland conservatism that allows the Left to take charge in all fields and never, ever rocks the boat. That supine behavior was never a good look for Republicans, and in the face of the conflicts in American society today, it should be decisively repudiated once and for all. Mike Pence should give up his quixotic presidential hopes and face reality. He doesn’t have enough presence or personality to become the kind-of conservative voice on CNN or MSNBC, but he’ll find work somewhere.
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