Former Vice President Mike Pence said he plans to make the expansion of abortion bans a central plank of his 2024 campaign as he launched his bid for the GOP nomination on Wednesday.
The white-haired conservative Republican spoke in Ankeny, Iowa, on Wednesday as he officially began his quest for the White House. His campaign launch came less than 24 hours after another Republican, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, entered the race as well.
In Iowa, Mr Pence spoke about his longtime opposition to abortion rights and accused his former boss of backing away from the issue in the wake of the political fallout from the Dobbs decision that ended federal protections for abortion rights.
“After leading the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn,” the former VP said.
“The sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for half a century — long before Donald Trump was ever a part of it. Now he treats it as an inconvenience, even blaming election losses on overturning Roe v Wade.”
His remarks make it clear that Mr Pence plans to embrace the issue as a major plank of his bid for the GOP nomination as well as the lane he hopes to occupy. The former vice president was long Mr Trump’s link to the evangelical right, which supported Ted Cruz during the 2016 primary contest and reluctantly came around to back Mr Trump in the general.
But whether Mr Pence will even see the same success as Mr Cruz, who ended his bid as the last GOP candidate to be steamrolled by the reality TV show star, is not even clear. He is currently polling in the low single digits, according to virtually every survey of the 2020 GOP field. And there are a bevy of Republicans running, including fellow conservative Nikki Haley.
And then there’s the issue of January 6, or rather Mr Pence’s refusal to go along with Donald Trump’s bid to halt his defeat to Joe Biden and force Congress to accept so-called “alternate” slates of electors who were willing to cast votes in the Electoral College for Donald Trump against the lawful election results in their own states.
That refusal is seen as a betrayal by Trumpworld, which by all indications continues to make up the majority of the GOP primary voter base. It’s unclear if Mr Pence will be able to overcome the accusations of betrayal lobbed at him by Mr Trump, the current frontrunner.
He’s also likely to come under fire from another rival, Chris Christie, who on Tuesday evening at his own campaign launch made clear he planned to draw blood with his critiques of the Trump administration from the right.
