Mike Pence, Pretend Lifeguard of Conservatism— Voters Already Left His Pool
Mike Pence anointed himself to stand athwart the populist Right with a whistle in his mouth, screaming for conservatives to “get out of the pool.”
The imagery fits him perfectly.
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Pence increasingly resembles that obnoxious childhood lifeguard we all remember—the self-important scold, high on perceived power, perched way above everyone else. As such, Pence is convinced that enforcing his rules matters more than understanding why people jumped into the water in the first place.
From his perch at CNN studios and establishment think tanks, Pence now lectures conservatives about “traditional principles,” warning Republicans against populism and urging a return to the old GOP orthodoxy. He has given obnoxious interviews recently , pushing this theme, trying to sell his irrelevant new book, presumably to Democrats who hate the America First movement.
But there’s one glaring problem with Pence’s sermon: the voters already rejected the system he represents. Specifically, Pence demands that Republicans engage in “soul-searching” over populism. Fine. Let’s do exactly that.
What exactly did the old Republican establishment “conserve”?
For 30 years, establishment Republicans insisted mass migration was good for America—good for GDP, good for business, good for “growth.”
But good for whom?
American workers faced relentless wage pressure. Small towns watched their identities change seemingly overnight. Schools, hospitals, and public services absorbed enormous strain. And corporate America got precisely what it wanted: an endless supply of cheap labor, all while generational Americans lost their nation.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Washington perfected the same political scam cycle: promise border security now, but actually deliver massive loopholes and labor importation later.
Thankfully, Americans realized they were being conned . That realization—not personality, not rhetoric, not “tribalism”—is why the populist Right rose so powerfully inside the Republican Party.
Working Americans revolted against a political class that treated citizenship as an abstraction, borders as optional, and national cohesion as secondary to corporate profit margins.
And immigration is only part of the story.
The old establishment consensus also delivered endless foreign wars, catastrophic trade imbalances, industrial collapse across the heartland, and an economic model that enriched Wall Street while hollowing out working-class communities.
Yet Surrender Mike now speaks as though this era represented some golden age of conservatism.
No. It represented managed decline.
The old Republican establishment did not conserve America. It managed America’s deterioration in a slightly slower and more polite fashion than the Left preferred, personally benefiting all the while.
That is why Pence increasingly sounds more comfortable on CNN than among grassroots conservatives. He speaks the language of institutional preservation, process worship, and donor-class economics. The modern Republican base speaks the language of sovereignty, citizenship, wages, borders, and national survival.
These are fundamentally different worldviews.
Pence can continue blowing his whistle from the lifeguard chair if he wants. He can continue warning conservatives not to swim too far from the approved establishment boundaries.
But voters are no longer asking permission from the old gatekeepers.
Because conservatism is supposed to CONSERVE something:
a nation,
a people,
a border,
a culture,
a future.
A movement that failed to defend those things for decades cannot credibly lecture Americans about conserving the country now.
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Steve Cortes is president of the League of American Workers and advisor to CatholicVote.
He directs political campaigns on media, polling, and Hispanic outreach, including Trump 2016/2020 and Vance 2022 US Senate.
He is a former broadcaster for Fox News and CNN.
This article was posted at American Greatness:
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