Cynics may scoff, but it can be done. As Pence notes in his vision statement, “There are Blue Dog Democrats [who] want to balance the budget, address our nation’s abounding debt, strengthen Social Security, and protect life and marriage. Our Minority will look for opportunities to work with them when there is agreement, and our hope will be that these occasions will not be few and far between.”
His second priority as Minority Leader relates to the White House. “I will stand with this president when he’s right and oppose him when he’s wrong,” he told his Heritage audience.
What’s needed, according to Pence, is a restoration of the Reagan ideals that inspired many conservatives to seek public office in the first place. Conservatives don’t need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what they believe. That’s been established for some time. At this point, he says in his vision statement, we need to remember and implement those ideas:
“We came here to promote freedom and opportunity. We came here to allow American families to keep more of their hard-earned money and spend it on their own priorities rather than Washington’s, a reality that only can be accomplished through less government, lower taxes, less federal spending and economic prosperity. We came here to rekindle the fires of men, material and morale that warm the warriors who stand on freedom’s ramparts in far-off lands. And we came here to assert again the constitutional rule of law, an unalienable right to life and the traditional values shared by millions of Americans.”
What matters, in the end, are not just your principles, but whether you’re willing to stick by them, especially when the political winds blow hard against you. What matters is not becoming the very thing you set out to conquer. As Pence put it, “We must take a page from the playbook of President Ronald Reagan, who taught us that it is not enough to believe great things, we must effectively communicate great things to the American people.”
Mike Pence communicates conservative principles by living them. While it took an election beating for some Republicans to “get religion,” Mike Pence has always kept the conservative faith, carried the flame and stayed the course. Although many in the Republican Party lost their way, Pence never lost his. He knows, as Reagan put it, that “either you will control your government, or government will control you.” That’s why, as many big-government liberals prepare to take over Congress, conservatives look to Pence as their best hope.