The Week: Pence Defends Conservative Values, Defies Trump

• We’re not for the latest Bernie Sanders idea, but we can see how the idea of getting the same pay for less work would come naturally to a senator.

• On January 6, 2021, Mike Pence defied Donald Trump. This was critical. He now says he cannot endorse Trump for another term as president—not “in good conscience.” It is startling that, in a general election, a former vice president has declined to endorse the president alongside whom he served. Whatever one may think of the choices Pence made between 2016 and 2020, he has behaved with a bold independence in the years since. Last summer, when he was running for the GOP presidential nomination, Pence traveled to Ukraine, to express his solidarity with that people under siege—this despite the fact that he must have known it would do him no good with the GOP electorate. He continues to remind Republicans who do not wish to hear it that the national debt is rising dangerously—and that entitlement programs need reforming because of it. He is also standing firm on the right to life at a time when many Republicans are blaming that cause for the party’s political travails. On all these issues, he differs with Trump in a way that speaks well of him—and of a brand of conservatism that deserves renewal.

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• We’re not for the latest Bernie Sanders idea, but we can see how the idea of getting the same pay for less work would come naturally to a senator.

• On January 6, 2021, Mike Pence defied Donald Trump. This was critical. He now says he cannot endorse Trump for another term as president—not “in good conscience.” It is startling that, in a general election, a former vice president has declined to endorse the president alongside whom he served. Whatever one may think of the choices Pence made between 2016 and 2020, he has behaved with a bold independence in the years since. Last summer, when he was running for the GOP presidential nomination, Pence traveled to Ukraine, to express his solidarity with that people under siege—this despite the fact that he must have known it would do him no good with the GOP electorate. He continues to remind Republicans who do not wish to hear it that the national debt is rising dangerously—and that entitlement programs need reforming because of it. He is also standing firm on the right to life at a time when many Republicans are blaming that cause for the party’s political travails. On all these issues, he differs with Trump in a way that speaks well of him—and of a brand of conservatism that deserves renewal.