Jeff Davis Chairman Us Beef Email
SPARTANBURG, S.C. ― In theory, Nate Leupp should exist exactly the sort of political influencer Mike Pence can count on equally he plots out a 2024 presidential run.
The Greenville manager of a Christian music store has been a mainstay in the evangelical fly of the GOP in upstate South Carolina for 16 of his 42 years. He has admired Pence for decades. He watched as his bloc of similarly minded Republicans leading the Greenville County chapter was ousted for non being sufficiently loyal to Donald Trump.
And yet, should the 2024 South Carolina primary come downward to a choice betwixt the onetime president who tried to overthrow commonwealth to remain in power or the former vice president who saved it by refusing to proceed, Leupp said he will probably go with Trump.
"For all the negatives of President Trump, I'd have him again," he said.
Then equally Pence returned to Due south Carolina last week in his standing pre-presidential entrada, such was the looming challenge: Effigy out a path in the disquisitional early-voting country without relying on two significant segments of eligible chief voters.
"His problem is: What function of the Republican Party does he come across as his base?" wondered Winthrop University political scientific discipline professor Scott Huffmon.
Fervent Trump supporters remain outraged that Pence did not use his potency on Jan. 6, 2021, to continue Trump in power, Huffmon said, while "Never Trumpers" volition non forgive him for "kowtowing" to Trump for iv years.
"This is an important tour for him to try to notice a Mike Pence base in Due south Carolina later he's potentially alienated both the pro-Trump and the never-Trump wings of the party," Huffmon said.
One Pence adviser said the onetime congressman from and governor of Indiana's analysis of the potential race is the same at present as it was non long after he and Trump left function 16 months agone ― that views will change over time, and Trump's dominance in the political party, specially as rivals showtime openly criticizing him, volition wane.
What'due south more, Pence has a natural constituency in S Carolina, the adviser said on condition of anonymity, citing the packed gala Pence headlined Thursday night for the Carolina Pregnancy Center in Spartanburg.
"When they sell out 2,000 tickets with Pence'southward name on information technology within a couple of weeks, that says something," he said.
A subdued victory lap over Roe five. Wade
Final week's leak of a majority Supreme Court stance that would overturn the 1973 decision recognizing a constitutional right to ballgame gave Pence the opportunity to highlight his bona fides on that issue over the past decades.
At a National Day of Prayer appearance at a Baptist church in Rock Colina, Pence told the 250 or so congregants they should "particularly pray that the v justices listed in the majority opinion leaked this week will accept the courage of their convictions to right a celebrated wrong." Dozens of them stood in line following his remarks to greet him and thank him.
To reporters afterward, he was careful to avert entirely the question of whether a Republican congressional majority should, if information technology comes next year, pass a national ban on abortion, insisting that legislation on such critical bug as "the sanctity of life" should instead be decided exclusively past state legislatures.
A few hours later, Pence appeared at the annual spring fundraiser for a "crisis" pregnancy center that counsels woman against seeking abortions and encourages them to either heighten the baby or put it upwards for adoption. There, while inaccurately claiming that his audience's views represented the majority of the nation, Pence cast it more as a religious effect than a political ane.
AP Photo/1000000 Kinnard
He described his own entry into the evangelical fold equally a college educatee attending a revival meeting in Kentucky in 1978, and his subsequent decision to become active in the abortion debate because of his reading of the Bible.
"I knew in that moment that His crusade must be my cause," he said, and reminded his audition that if Roe was, in fact, reversed, that meant abortion opponents had to turn their attention to statehouses. "And though I do not know if I will be hither to run across it, I believe with all my eye that the day will come up when the correct to life is the police of the land in every state in America."
Alexia Newman, the managing director of the pregnancy eye and a member of the state Republican Party, said main voters know that Pence is genuine about his convictions and is not just saying what they want to hear.
"His record has followed him," she said. "He articulates the things that are dearest to us South Carolinians."
The Jan. 6 legacy
Of form, articulating things dear to evangelical Christians was a big part of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz'due south 2016 strategy to win South Carolina and and then employ that to roll to victories in Southern states on Super Tuesday.
The programme failed, with Trump comfortably winning Due south Carolina with 33% of the vote, and Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio essentially tying for second x points backside ― that, despite Trump's record equally a contempo registered Democrat, proponent of abortion rights and tabloid effigy with a checkered personal history with women.
The Pence adviser said he was surprised past Trump's South Carolina win in 2016, but later came to sympathize that many voters didn't intendance that Trump was a combative jerk so long as he would be a combative wiggle on their behalf. "We've tried the prissy guy arroyo with George W. Bush and we got John Roberts," he said, referring to the Supreme Court chief justice whom many conservatives believe has betrayed their cause. "We tried the dainty guy approach with [2012 GOP nominee] Mitt Romney and look where that got united states of america."
Further complicating matters for Pence in South Carolina is the segment of Trump supporters who not only take no trouble with his repeated lies about the ballot that ended up inciting the Jan. six set on on the U.Due south. Capitol, but who also believe Pence turned his back on Trump and the country by non doing what Trump had demanded.
Jeff Davis is the chairman of what calls itself the "new" Greenville GOP, a group that was essentially excommunicated from the country party after information technology took over the local affiliate. (This weekend information technology hosted longtime Trump confidant Roger Rock and ballot conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.) Davis said that while Pence has the support of some "far-right" evangelical Christians and "establishment" Republicans, Pence failed to do all he could to keep Trump in the White House.
"Mike Pence betrayed the people," he said. "I don't remember he has much of a chance at all hither in the state of South Carolina."
"Vice President Pence helped gear up the policy in the Trump administration in a very fundamental way. What he needs to do is to tell that story."
- S Carolina country Sen. Josh Kimbrell (R)
It's not clear how large a slice of Republicans these "Never Pencers" represent, and where they might go should Trump wind up not running.
A far bigger problem for Pence is Republicans like Leupp, who in one case ran the Greenville Canton GOP before it was seized by Davis' faction. Leupp said he was an gentleman of Pence going to back to the early on 2000s. "I dearest Mike Pence," he said. "I wanted Mike Pence to run before anybody knew Mike Pence."
In fact, the one action Trump took in 2016 that finally fabricated Leupp a supporter was choosing Pence as his running mate. "That's when he won me over."
And after four years of watching Trump engage conservative judges and enact conservative policies, Leupp said, he has get convinced that Trump, despite everything, would be the all-time for conservatives, fifty-fifty better than Pence.
Leupp added that he'south confident he's not solitary. "If Donald Trump runs to exist the party'south nominee, Donald Trump will win the state of South Carolina," he said.
Ironically, many of the traditional bourgeois goals that were accomplished under Trump happened not because he was personally driving them, but because his general lack of involvement and brusque attention span allowed Pence and others to fill the vacuum.
Many of the regulatory rollbacks across executive co-operative agencies happened because Pence's role was able to place officials into senior and midlevel positions, using his contacts in the business community and the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity activist network.
More than 200 conservative federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices, were appointed cheers to the efforts of Leonard Leo's Federalist Society and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, with Trump doing trivial more than than signing the paperwork.
And the 2017 tax cuts that Republicans well-nigh universally loved were primarily the work of and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, pushing a decadeslong priority of the party.
Josh Kimbrell, a Southward Carolina state senator and sponsor of three of Pence's v trips to the country, said this history is already known to many chief voters, and information technology is incumbent on Pence to make sure information technology is known to all of them.
"Vice President Pence helped fix the policy in the Trump administration in a very fundamental style," Kimbrell said. "What he needs to do is to tell that story. You need to say: Here's what I did. Not merely what nosotros did, here's what I did. Considering I remember a lot of people know, just more people need to know."
Huffmon remains skeptical that strategy would work, specially with Trump loudly and repeatedly taking all the credit.
"It's what the base of operations believes," Huffmon said, calculation that the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade thanks to the three justices Trump named to the high courtroom will provide him even more than fodder. "Donald Trump will be able to merits credit for those appointees."
Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-pence-south-carolina_n_6276aa3be4b0b7c8f084eb1e
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