In a speech last week in New Hampshire, former Vice President Mike Pence warned Republican voters of the “siren song” of populism.

Today, I ask my fellow Republicans this: In the days to come, will we be the party of conservatism, or will our party follow the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles?

Politically speaking, Mike Pence is a dead man walking. He has no chance of becoming the Republican nominee for president. As Columbia University Department of Political Science professor Robert Shapiro said:

Pence is talking to deaf ears; he is damaged goods. The Republicans for now are the party of Trump unless someone more conventionally conservative takes over—and that will not be Pence.

However, what Pence is saying about populism is an important conversation that conservatives should be having. So said David Darmofal, political scientist at the University of South Carolina:

The debate that former Vice President Pence is seeking to have between Reaganite conservatism and populism is a worthwhile one for the Republican Party to be having.

Problem is, however, would the populist Trump base even listen? And just what is conservative populism — or populist nationalism — anyway?

Populism Has a Weird History in the GOP

In 2019, during the Trump administration, Colin Dueck, a professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, published a book entitled Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism. The Claremont Institute published an excerpt at The American Mind, which explained how populism evolved within the Republican Party.

Dueck wrote that the movement is largely anti-elitist, but varies wildly in interpretation:

Apart from its anti-establishment premise, perhaps the single most striking feature of American populism historically is its sheer variety in terms of attitudes, platforms, and specific issues of concern …

Over the past seventy years, the GOP has become a more populist party by realigning itself in a conservative direction on social and cultural issues.

He also explained how three major conservative voices in the 20th century played roles in mapping out a populist direction. Barry Goldwater, for example, used civil rights issues to attract white Southerners; however, Lyndon Johnson drubbed him in the 1964 presidential election. Later, Richard Nixon sought to construct a center-right movement in reaction to LBJ’s Great Society. Finally, Ronald Reagan united blue collar and college-educated Republicans on social and economic issues. Reagan, noted Dueck, was the most successful conservative of the 20th century.

Trump populism has taken another tack in the early 21st century. Dueck found that among matters of defense spending, counter-terrorism, border security, and social issues, core conservatives and Trump populist-nationalists align. However, a split exists between traditional conservatives and Trump populists, especially concerning America’s presence on the global stage:

Screenshot: americanmind.org.

Dueck concluded:

In sum, there has indeed been a long-term trend or realignment toward a more populist cultural conservatism within the GOP, with significant implications for U.S. foreign policy, and these pressures are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

Was Pence Correct to Target Populism?

As usual, it depends on whom you ask.

The editors at National Review — no Trump-mouthpiece over there — concluded that Mike Pence’s speech was “admirable,” but it “misidentified the target.” And once again, it’s because populism is such a sticky wicket for the GOP:

His speech was sincere, and even courageous in the current Republican context, but failed to quite bell the cat.

The basic problem is that it’s hard to define populism. Is it an emotive, anti-elitist mode of politics or a set of substantive beliefs?

Instead, Mike Pence’s speech was actually an attack on Donald Trump, and, by extension, Trump’s mini-me Vivek Ramaswamy. However, NR said that Pence was correct in calling out the GOP’s flirtation with populism:

… there’s currently a strong impulse in the party, largely associated with the GOP’s populists, to disdain markets, to use government power to try to achieve favored ends, to diminish the U.S. leadership role around the world, and to blithely accept elevated budget deficits and ever-expanding government debt. There are also too many in the party who drift with the current even when they know better.

NR writers Rich Lowry and Michael Brendan Dougherty also discussed the Pence speech in a podcast in which they made the following points:

Is opposition to the elites who run our educational system — is that conservative or is that populist? Opposition to the lockdowns and the rule by experts during Covid — was that conservative or populist? 

On the other hand …

All that said, clearly populists are more friendly to using government for ends that they think are important. They are more skeptical of intervention overseas … And they really don’t care about the debt at all … 

What Do Trump Populists Really Want?

Ask an average Trump stalwart and you may get a host of responses.

They may answer that they want to put “America First” under a President Trump rather than the despised neocon elitists. But Trump populists forget that within his first 100 days in office, Trump ordered a missile strike on Syria. In 2020 he was responsible for the attack that killed Qasem Soleimani, a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Trump also threatened to withdraw from NATO unless member nations financially ponied up because “massive amounts of money is owed,” in his words. But the US remains in NATO.

Some “America Firster” Trump was.

Moreover, Trump supporters who castigate Joe Biden for his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan should recall that in the waning days of his presidency, Trump himself ordered a rapid withdrawal of all troops. In the end, however, senior military staff believed that the order did not have proper legal standing requiring them to follow through.

As Noah Rothman wrote:

Donald Trump never had a foreign-policy doctrine. He had moods, and those moods were subject to volatile shifts.

Do Trump supporters merely want “payback” for Democrat efforts to remove him from office? Or do they want to “own the libs”? That’s the “emotive mode” that NR described, rather than thoughtful consideration of policy. For a group that extols the catchphrase “facts don’t care about your feelings,” some Trump supporters base their advocacy of him on their feelings.

Besides, what goes around, comes around. In American politics that’s especially true. So where will it all end — or does it?

I’m ready for “Zombie Reaganism” to rise from its grave. We could use a shot of what the Gipper stood for: traditional values, fiscal conservatism, and a return to America being a strong presence on the world stage. And of course, a healthy dose of Reagan’s famously sunny disposition.

Featured image: “Mike Pence” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped.