A Republican Time for Choosing

by Rod Williams, June 2, 2026 - Former Vice President Mike Pence was on the Sunday talk shows, asking what needs to be asked: Will the Republican Party be the party of principled conservatism or continue down the path of being a right-wing populist nationalist party?

Mike Pence was back in the news talking about his newly released book, What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience. It is a 304‑page political manifesto described as a “21st‑century version of The Conscience of a Conservative.”

Pence says he wrote the book to reaffirm enduring conservative principles and warn against the rise of “big‑government populism” within the Republican Party. 

Many of my liberal friends, I am sure, think the current Trump Republican Party is what the Republican Party always was once you scratched away the veneer of respectability. We who have labored for years to advance the cause of conservatism know that what we are seeing in the Party of Donald Trump bears little resemblance to the post-World War II modern conservative movement, which was at home in the Republican Party. 

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The party of William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater and moving forward to Ronald Reagan and Paul Ryan, has little in common with the party dominated by and blindly loyal to Donald Trump. The pre-Trump party believed certain things that Trump disavows, either in words or actions. The pre-Trump Republican Party opposed socialism, believed in free trade, accepted America's leadership role in the world, supported selective security, balanced budgets, due process and the Constitution, states' rights, federalism, and limited government, and believed character mattered. 

I have great admiration for Mike Pence. If would have had J. D. Vance as Vice President at the time, or any number of other Republicans who place loyalty to Donald Trump over loyalty to the Constitution, Donald Trump's coup attempt would have succeeded. It is easy to forget the goal of the insurrectionist. The joint session of Congress was assembled to count electoral votes to formalize Biden's victory in the 2020 United States presidential election. The protestors wanted to stop the count. Vice President Pence stood firm. When the protestors breached the Capitol, they ran through it looking to find and kill Mike Pence. A man with less courage and less commitment to the Constitution and his duties would have abandoned the effort to confirm the election results, and the insurrectionists would have won. Mike Pence took cover in the basement and after order was restored, he called the joint session back into session, and Congress fulfilled its duties. Mike Pense is a hero. 

I have some minor critiques of Mike Pence and some different policy priorities. While I am pro-life, this issue does not hold quite the central place in my ideology as it does for Mike Pence. Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, I think the issue should be left to the states and fought out at the state level. 

Mike Pence often acts as if the Donald Trump of the first term was a standard Republican and Trump went crazy in his second term. I will grant that Trump is much worse in his second term than in his first. During his first term, Trump was surrounded by traditional Republicans who kept him within resonable guard rails. The signs were there, however, that Trump was a big-government populist, and his nasty character was on full display. It was the first term Trump who attempted the coup. By the end of his first term, it was clear who Donald Trump was. 

I also wish Pense seemed more outraged at times, but maybe being calm and measured is a virtue, not a fault. In any event, I believe that if we survive the Trump presidency with our democracy intact, and history is written about the Trump years, Mike Pence will be remembered as a profile in courage and a hero of the republic. 

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