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The Pence Mirage: Why The Right Isn't Leaving Trump

https://amgreatness.com/2025/12/29/the-pence-mirage-why-the-right-isnt-leaving-trump/

To listen to the chatter of the Important People, you would think that a “decent and elevated conservatism”™ was about to return, has returned, or is just about to triumph in the person of—cue the drum roll—Mike Pence, former vice president and perpetual Mr. Goody Two-Shoes.

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Yes, that’s right, because a baker’s dozen of less-than-fully gruntled employees of the Heritage Foundation decamped to Pence’s “Advancing American Freedom” sandbox, we are supposed to believe—at least, we are supposed to say—that a “https://freebeacon.com/policy/heritage-foundation-scholars-jump-to-mike-pences-group-in-reorganization-of-the-conservative-movement/

” is underway.

What do you think?

Does the mutiny at the Heritage Foundation signal a “significant shift within the American right?” Or is it just the familiar anti-Trump palaver we’ve been used to since the media’s “https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/familiar-quotations/4423-edmund-burke-1729-1797-john-bartlett/

” on Donald Trump?

I think it’s the latter. I think so, in part, because Mike “Mr. Morality” Pence is a political non-entity and in part because the colossus he faces is not the Heritage Foundation but his old boss, Donald Trump.

These days, any mention of the Heritage Foundation or its president, Kevin Roberts, acts like a ringing bell before the canines of Ivan Pavlov. Instead of salivating, susceptible souls start shouting “Tucker Carlson.” I have written about that melodrama a couple of times—https://amgreatness.com/2025/11/09/the-heritage-foundations-meltdown/

. I don’t really have more to add about that controversy beyond acknowledging that I like it better when conservatives train their fire on leftists rather than on one another. Perhaps the motto “no enemies on the right” is deficient as a matter of principle. As a matter of practical politics, however, there is a lot to be said for it.

In any event, it has been amusing to watch Mike Pence pretend that he might become the new standard-bearer for that “decent and elevated conservatism” I mentioned above. The line comes from Bill Kristol, who, in 2019, insisted that Donald Trump was destroying the “https://x.com/BillKristol/status/1080867256593199104?s=20

.” I suppose that was the elevated thing to say. It was not the vote-getting thing to say.

Meanwhile, as Pence looks forward to a lifetime of losing gracefully and basks in the warm glow of moral indignation, Donald Trump has been busy actually doing things.

People in Pence’s orbit, and Pence himself, have suggested that Trump’s MAGA agenda is old news, that it has run its course, and that it needs to be retired for something more decent and more elevated. The great https://open.substack.com/pub/donsurber/p/remembering-peak-trump?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

recently that the beautiful people in the media and in the know have been predicting “Peak Trump” at least since the moment he rode down the elevator in Trump Tower to announce his bid for the presidency in 2015.

I hate to crash that party, but it is worth noting that Donald Trump has yet to pass the one-year mark of his current four-year term.

In that brief time, he has sealed the southern border, overseen the deportation (self- and assisted-) of more than two million illegal immigrants, and dismantled the insidious racist institution of DEI. He is in the process of destroying the archipelago headquarters of the Teachers Union, also known as the Department of Education, and those bits of the EPA that are concerned more with virtue signaling than with maintaining clean air and water. He has also begun the long process of defunding the international empire of Democrat satellites, the myriad of so-called “Non-Governmental Organizations,” which turn out on closer inspection to be semi-camouflaged proxies for the progressive agenda. Then there are little things like brokering peace in the Middle East, destroying ISIS, and stanching the flow of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into the U.S.

On the debit side, I suppose we could list making our European allies angry by pointing out that their Orwellian culture of censorship (free speech, https://x.com/ricwe123/status/2003722093377257733?s=20

who attempt to censor or fine U.S. individuals and businesses.

Meanwhile, Trump has flooded the economy with trillions of dollars of foreign investment and ramped up domestic energy production. We were warned that Trump’s populist policies would precipitate economic disaster. It hasn’t worked out that way. Just a few days ago, the news broke that growth for the third quarter of this year was an astonishing 4.3%, while inflation, predicted to be over 3 percent, came in at 2.7 percent.

People have been complaining about “affordability.” Trump has been effective in addressing that, too. Travel in the U.S. is way up. Why? Because the cost of energy is way down. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/23/oil-prices-holiday-road-trip-december-aaa.html

, a typical headline reads, “fall to four-year lows as millions embark on holiday road trips.” Rents are falling, private sector employment for Americans is up, and the trade deficit is half what it was under Biden.

Then there is crime. Trump’s decision to send the National Guard into various violent, dysfunctional cities put many knickers in a twist. But last week we learned that https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2003898361611493387?s=20

, “Removing murderers from the streets works wonders.”

Notwithstanding the anti-Trump Casandras, the Mike Pence Show is a limited-run engagement in an off-off-off Broadway venue patronized mostly by people like Bill Kristol and various disaffected policy lemmings. The New York Times, CNN, and Politico will continue to attend to the headlines on their marquee. Denizens of the deep state will applaud. But the main stage belongs to Donald Trump, internecine squabbles notwithstanding.