Pence’s attempt to salvage the Republican Party won’t succeed. It will fail not because of any intrinsic problem with the party itself—political parties are merely vessels for the will of the people—but because the problem with the Republican Party is Republican voters. They’re the ones who wanted Trump. They’re the ones who approve of January 6. They’re the ones who insist that Trump actually won in 2020. They’re the ones who are clamoring to nominate him again in 2024.
Republican voters view all of the terrible outcomes from the first Trump administration—the political violence, the white nationalism, the fiscal irresponsibility, the COVID death tolls—not as bugs, but as features. This is what they want.
But political parties are not monoliths. About one-third of Republican voters have a relatively clear-eyed view of what happened on January 6. About one-fifth of Republican voters know that Joe Biden won a sacred landslide victory over Trump in 2020. About one in 20 Republican voters prefers Pence to Trump for 2024.
Democrats ought to be trying to pry these voters away from the Republican Party in the event that Trump runs again. By making it clear that the Democratic Party appreciates Mike Pence as a hero of democracy—and that GOP lawmakers do not—they might just persuade a small but crucial percentage of these Pence Republicans to cross over in 2024.
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