--- title: In Major Speech, Pence Urges GOP to Ditch Trump's Populism description: In his most explicit rebuke of his former boss yet, Pence challenged Republicans to trade Trump's angry populism for Reagan-era conservatism canonical: https://time.com/6311494/mike-pence-populism-donald-trump-gop-future/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-09-06T22:28:16.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:56.232Z article:section: Politics og:title: In Major Speech, Pence Urges GOP to Ditch Trump's Populism og:description: In his most explicit rebuke of his former boss yet, Pence opened a new front in the 2024 race, one with strong echoes of 1976. og:url: https://time.com/6311494/mike-pence-populism-donald-trump-gop-future/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8d484175942ced4f/698a4020457a52c7f1d67ecf/GettyImages-1645168218.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Attends Labor Day Events In New Hampshire og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: In Major Speech, Pence Urges GOP to Ditch Trump's Populism twitter:description: In his most explicit rebuke of his former boss yet, Pence opened a new front in the 2024 race, one with strong echoes of 1976. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8d484175942ced4f/698a4020457a52c7f1d67ecf/GettyImages-1645168218.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Pence Challenges GOP to Ditch Trump's Populism for Reagan-Era Conservatism > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Pleads Not Guilty As Impeachment Trial Begins [Watch (HLS stream): Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Pleads Not Guilty As Impeachment Trial Begins](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/qLktwST2.m3u8) (2:50)  _Published 2023-09-06. The impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton began Tuesday with the embattled Republican facing accusations of corruption and bribery that have shadowed him for years._  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Sep 6, 2023 10:28 PM UTC  Former Vice President Mike Pence attends a Labor Day Picnic on September 4, 2023 in Salem, New Hampshire. Former Vice President Mike Pence attends a Labor Day Picnic on September 4, 2023 in Salem, New Hampshire.Scott Eisen—Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Sep 6, 2023 10:28 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ There’s a dividing line in the Republican Party, and you can find it right around 1975\. That’s the year when a former Governor of California decided to [challenge](https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/04/archives/reagan-to-press-attacks-on-ford-he-will-stress-failures-of-us.html) a sitting President of his own party and remake the entire GOP. Welcome to Ronald Reagan’s reboot. While most of the Republican field will be sure to invoke the Gipper in a few weeks when they travel to his resting place in Simi Valley, Calif., for their second debate, one of the contenders got something of a headstart on Wednesday, using a speech in New Hampshire to renew rivalries born out of Cold War necessity. ### More From TIME Speaking at Saint Anselm College on the outskirts of Manchester, former Vice President Mike Pence rang the gong of old-school conservatism like only a former radio host could, channeling Ol’ Ronnie just enough. And it signaled, in an ever-so-nuanced way, that the fight in 2024 had plenty of echoes to 1976’s race: a powerful _de facto_ incumbent was not inevitable, the party favorite may still prevail but deserves a challenge, and a reboot of the party is at foot even if its footing is unsteady at the moment. “Should the new populism of the right seize and guide our party, the Republican Party as we have long known it will cease to exist,” Pence said on campus, doing his best Thatcherite channeling. “And the fate of American freedom would be in doubt.” As much as Democrats want 2024 to be a fight over the fate of a [post-_Roe_](https://time.com/6190995/abortion-future-after-roe/) world and a microchip [economy](https://time.com/6200728/chips-act-congress-supply-chain/) and a skid into life-after-[Putin](https://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-runner-up-vladimir-putin/) or -[Xi](https://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-xi-jinping-runner-up/), it may well be the contest that is dictated by the confines of era when David Bowie topped the charts. The ghosts of the post-Watergate era haunt the current Republican Party, and there’s no reason to think anything loyalists can expunge those spirits. The fondue is hot, the leggings are tight, and the rhetoric is hotter—even if the colors from those original VHS cassettes were fading. Everything old is new again, and everything new is too newfangled. Which is perfect proving ground for Pence, whose posture on Wednesday was one he had been inching toward for over a year. With an ex-President trying to mount a [comeback](https://time.com/3079809/richard-nixon-on-watergate/) far more audacious than anything Dick Nixon imagined with his David Frost interviews, the Republican Party is being forced to face a gut check of its own making. Sure, Trump is a fundraising [behemoth](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/26/trump-mugshot-fundraising-00113118), but he’s also a pugilistic [bully](https://time.com/5943181/donald-trump-cpac-republican-party/). For every comma he adds to the red-hatted ledger, he adds a scarlet demerit for decency. No one really knows what cardinal ordinance this march is heading toward. And this is where Pence matters. For all of his self-righteous bluster and his indulgent image of himself as a guardian of the high ground, Pence remains an unimpeachable (and [unimpeached](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/trump-impeached.html)) weathervane of the conservative movement. During his first tour of Washington as a member of Congress, Pence was the baseline for conservative orthodoxy. In Leadership, he was House Republicans’ gut check on whether a notion was sufficiently fair game. Never one to scream, his side eye could scuttle any idea well before it made its way to the clerks, the bean counters, or pollsters. Years later, Pence—and particularly his testimony—may be what saves the modern Republican Party from re-nominating Trump, a criminal defendant for all and political pariah for much of this country. As Trump’s lieutenant for four years—and target-for-lynching for a day back on [Jan. 6](https://time.com/5927664/capital-siege-trump-supporters/)—Pence has an inside track on what went down that terrifying day at the Captiol, when deputized political thugs of the then-President tried to subvert democracy to keep Trump in power. But that quality—his unbending fealty to the Constitution and wise counsel that told him he couldn’t [heed](https://time.com/6199590/mike-pence-secret-service-jan-6-hearings/) Trump’s demands to, at best, bend the law—may also be his undoing politically. Pence is at the fore, but only of the second tier. He is still polling in [single digits](https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/05/politics/trump-gop-primary-2024/index.html) with no real obvious moment to break out of that slump. He has tried to [embrace](https://time.com/6234081/mike-pence-memoir-trump-column/) the legacy of the Trump record without saddling himself with everything unseemly about the era. For a devout man devoid of vice, Pence is trying to have his cake and eat it, too. Pence’s new pitch paints Trump as a populist on par with the likes of Howard Dean or Bobby Kennedy. Pence argues he and Trump governed from a crouch of conservatism but that Trump elected to a second term would be unmoored, unable to promise that he’d go forward with such an instinct. Implicit in the caution: Voters don’t know what version of Trumpism they’d be buying in 2024\. And, without Pence as a guardrail V.P., they can’t risk it. Pence, ultimately, may not matter. He’s a well-funded polling trailer at the moment, and his very, very smart team hasn’t yet cracked how to break the Republican Party’s fervent fever dream of Trumpist hallucinations. Pence is as strong as a true conservative as the field could be at the moment, but he’s punching up, up, up. Once the mob sought him out for the [gallows](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/us/politics/jan-6-gallows.html) on Jan. 6, Pence’s political fate may have been sealed. Still, it’s not for nothing that Pence showed up to tell his fellow conservatives that they don’t have to be hostage to Trumpism. As much as the Republican Party ambled into Gerald Ford in the wake of Nixon’s resignation—and the half-century of consternation that followed his scandals of his own making—there is still a chunk of this country that holds the ideological ground for it. Trumpism may dominate the GOP, but it isn’t the only identity that can flourish on the right. Pence may well be on a doomed mission to win the nomination, but his goal may be more important, more idealized: to remind Republicans that there was an era before the populist, Trumpian bullhorn; there once was a mild-mannered man from the Midwest (Reagan from Illinois, Pence from Indiana) who remade the GOP in his conservative image. The party may yet survive. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. 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