Of course, the answer to Mike Pence’s comment on the siren song of populism, which has so well defined precisely who he is, is that those aren’t beautiful women posing as conservatives trying to lure well-intentioned people to the rocks of their destruction. No, those utterances toward populism result from many years of lies by a party, the Republicans, who pretended to be a small government party but are no different from the Democrats. I could say that about my own Republican Party in my town, but that’s not a new story. I’ve been dealing with this balancing act since Ross Perot ran for president, and I supported him because I would never get behind the CIA. George Bush or his haphazard son, “W.” Ronald Reagan was pretty good for a while before his assassination attempt, and after the party establishment started getting to him, he was much less effective during his second term. Then we had the Clinton years and the fake government shutdowns. When my wife had a chance to meet Newt Gingrich at a Republican Party event a few years ago, she refused to shake his hand because she was still mad at Newt for caving to Clinton when Republicans had him on the ropes and could have saved a lot of us a lot of grief. No, populism is a much bigger story than just some fad. It’s more than a movement and undoubtedly more sophisticated than some siren song attached to lustful desire and short-term gratification.
Populism is a political strategy that seeks to appeal to the interests and concerns of ordinary people, especially those who feel that the established political and economic elites are not meeting their needs. It often involves rhetoric that frames the people as opposed to a corrupt or self-serving elite and emphasizes the importance of direct democracy and the people’s will. However, populism can also be controversial and divisive, and its effects on society and politics depend mainly on how it is used and by whom. The conservative tether that Pence is talking about is a leftover idea fresh off of wins during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 when the Constitution was still new and victorious wars rallied people to the value. But this Republican Party that Mike Pence is talking about is like some Dallas Cowboys fan still wearing a Super Bowl shirt from the ’70s or ’90s. It would be best if you kept winning, guys. You have to earn respect; it doesn’t just grow on trees. And that is the problem with Mike Pence’s view of what conservativism is. Conservatives have been the turn-the-other-cheek party, the party of losers. Who cares what your principles are if you will always get your ass kicked? That’s not good for branding. And because they have been soft on everything, corruption has grown into a maddening contraption. People want wins, and the Republican Party has not given it to them. Instead, they have been happy to lose, and people are tired of it.
I remember it well: the night before the election in 1992, I was at the Ross Perot headquarters in Dallas, Texas, getting gifts from his daughters and enjoying the patriotism of a hard-fought campaign. Many people were mad at me for not supporting George Bush, the elder. I was proud that Perot got 19% of the vote then. But I hated Clinton so severely that I supported Bob Dole four years later. He turned out to be pretty smart; he would become a big Trump supporter. He was a pretty good guy, even if it took him most of his life to figure it out. I supported John McCain, and he lost to the communist Obama. And a few years after that, I supported Mitt Romney, and I remember how it was in 2012. A bunch of people who thought they had conservative ideas all figured out. One of John Boehner’s proudest moments was bringing the Pope to the congressional floor as Speaker of the House, as he cried like a baby at just about everything. Republicans have been like that football team that always loses but are in your hometown, so you support them unquestioningly, like some fool who accepts losers. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. Especially when the Democrats have shown such a propensity for evil. Going back to the Perot election to be in Downtown Cincinnati with many political influencers and watching Clinton give his concession speech was a real gut punch. Would Bush have been better? No, Clinton only accelerated the eventual drive toward populism. As would Obama and now Biden. Populism would come along regardless because defending the Constitution would require political victories, and nobody was promising that until Trump came along. And that’s where things stand today. Americans were hungry for an American First party and wanted it to be Republicans, the Party of Lincoln, the party that freed the enslaved people. And the party of small government. Other people allowed globalism to seep into the mix and ruin the character of America as a nation. They did so by deceit, and people know that now.
Americans want more than a tailgate party from their Republican Party. They want to win and destroy the evil Democrats. To truly stand for small government and to be fiscally responsible. We now have a band of thieves who run the Beltway culture with lobbyists and overpaid consultants. And it makes people sick to see. They want victory and are turning to populism to give it to them. People like Judas Pence sold out our country, allowed an election to be stolen, and are trying to put the country back in the hands of the people who screwed it up in the first place. And people aren’t going to stand for it. I am surprised to see how quickly Republicans in my region have forgotten, and it’s obvious they probably never understood the Trump years. They were holding their nose and hoping for a return to the low expectations of party politics and controlled opposition. But that’s never what I signed up for. I was always a populist and more than that, I expected to win. Not just once or twice but every time. And unless my political party is committed to that, I’m not with them. I will work against losers every time. This is why Mike Pence, with all his years in politics, should know better. Yet he didn’t, and he said those words against populism anyway, showing he learned nothing in all those years with Trump. None of that magic dust rubbed off on him. Is he happy to be a loser so long as he stands by conservative ideas, even if they are always just ideas and not a reality? No, people want winners in their lives, and without victory, populism will take on a life of its own. And if Republicans aren’t committed to winning, they aren’t committed to conservative ideas. Because they have to be willing to fight for those ideas, and fighting means winning.
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 