(TotalConservative.com) – Republican presidential candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence condemned populism within the Republican Party during a speech in New Hampshire on Wednesday.
Pence spoke in Manchester, New Hampshire, at St. Anselm College’s Institute of Politics and contrasted his conservative views and values to those of populists within the Republican Party who align more with Pence’s former boss and current GOP nomination rival, former President Donald Trump.
The former vice president told the audience that he came to St. Anselm College to say “that Republican voters face a choice” in New Hampshire and “every state around the nation” during the presidential primary elections. Pence said he believes it “will determine the fate of our party” and the course of the whole country “for years to come.”
He then posed a question to the audience, asking them if they would “be the party of conservatism” or “follow the siren song of populism” without “conservative principles.” Pence said that the “future” of the “movement” within the Republican Party “belongs to one or the other” but “not both.” He then added that the “fundamental divide” between the two factions “is unbridgeable.”
Despite longstanding ideological differences between conservatism and liberalism along with the Democratic Party, Pence believes the conservative movement is now being threatened “from within” the Republican Party due to populists. Populism encompasses a range of political views that typically center around the masses versus the political elites, who have different motivations and interests than the average person, which can manifest on the left or the right politically. Pence described both leftwing and rightwing populists as “fellow travelers on the same road to ruin.”
The former vice president then criticized his former running mate and boss, accusing Trump of terminating “all rules” in his quest to appease his populist movement. Pence believes the GOP, he and others have “long known will cease to exist” if “the new populism of the right” seizes control of the party.
Pence is currently way down in the polls compared to Trump, and he’s even getting beat by former UN ambassador Nikki Haley as well as political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy.
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