Pence Denounces Trump at Announcement  06/08 06:17

   

   ANKENY, Iowa (AP) -- Former Vice President Mike Pence opened his bid for the 
Republican nomination for president Wednesday with a firm denunciation of 
former President Donald Trump, accusing his two-time running mate of abandoning 
conservative principles and being guilty of dereliction of duty on Jan. 6, 2021.

   On that perilous day, Pence said, as Trump supporters stormed the U.S. 
Capitol after the president falsely insisted his vice president could overturn 
the election results, Trump "demanded I choose between him and our 
Constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice."

   Pence is the first vice president in modern history to challenge the 
president under whom he served. While he spent much of his speech, delivered at 
a community college in a suburb of Des Moines, criticizing Democratic President 
Joe Biden and the direction he has taken the country, he also addressed Jan. 6 
head-on, saying Trump had disqualified himself when he declared falsely that 
Pence had the power to keep him in office.

   Trump's statements about mass voting fraud led a mob of his supporters to 
storm the U.S. Capitol, sending Pence and his family scrambling for safety as 
some in the crowd chanted, "Hang Mike Pence!"

   "I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be 
president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them 
over the Constitution should never be president of the United Sates again," the 
former vice president said.

   Pence has spent much of the past two-and-a-half-years grappling with fallout 
from that day as he has tried to chart a political future in a party that 
remains deeply loyal to Trump and is filled with many who still believe Trump's 
lies that the 2020 election was stolen and that Pence somehow could reject the 
results.

   While Pence has criticized Trump as he has worked to forge an identity of 
his own outside the former president's shadow, he has generally done so 
obliquely, reflecting Trump's continued popularity in the party. But Wednesday, 
as Pence made his pitch to voters for the first time as a declared candidate, 
he did not hold his tongue.

   He accused the former president of abandoning the conservative values he ran 
on, including on abortion.

   Pence, who supports a national ban on the procedure, said: "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 sanctity of life 
has been our party's calling for half a century -- long before Donald Trump was 
a part of it. Now he treats it as an inconvenience, even blaming our election 
losses in 2022 on overturning Roe v. Wade."

   Trump has declined to say what limits he supports nationally and has blamed 
some midterm candidates' strong rhetoric for their losses last November.

   Pence also bemoaned the current politics of "grudges and grievances," saying 
the country needs leaders who know the difference between the "politics of 
outrage and standing firm."

   "We will restore a threshold of civility in public life," he pledged.

   Nonetheless, in an interview with Fox News after his speech, Pence said he 
will "absolutely support the Republican nominee," even if it's Trump. And 
during a CNN town hall Wednesday night, Pence said he does not believe Trump 
should be indicted in the Mar-a-Lago documents case -- even if federal 
prosecutors have evidence he committed a crime.

   "I would just hope that there would be a way for them to move forward 
without the dramatic and drastic and divisive step of indicting (the) former 
president of the United States," he said. He also refused to say whether, if 
elected, he would pardon Trump, if Trump were convicted.

   Trump offered no response to Pence's opening speech, but his supporters shot 
back.

   "The question most GOP voters are asking themselves about Pence's candidacy 
is 'Why?'" said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for a Trump-backing super PAC.

   With Pence's entry into the race, on his 64th birthday, the GOP field is 
largely set. It includes Trump, who's leading in early polls, Florida Gov. Ron 
DeSantis, who remains in second, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, 
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

   Pence's campaign will test the party's appetite for a socially conservative 
and deeply religious candidate who has criticized the populist tide that has 
swept through his party under Trump. Pence, in many ways, represents a 
throwback to a party from days past. Unlike Trump and DeSantis, he argues cuts 
to Social Security and Medicare must be on the table and has blasted those who 
have questioned why the U.S. should continue to send aid to Ukraine to counter 
Russian aggression.

   Pence and his advisers see Iowa -- the state that will cast the first votes 
of the GOP nominating calendar -- as key to his pathway to the nomination. Its 
caucusgoers include a large portion of evangelical Christian voters, whom they 
see as a natural constituency for Pence, a social conservative who often talks 
about his faith.

   But Pence faces steep challenges. Despite being one of the best-known 
Republican candidates in the crowded field, he is viewed skeptically by voters 
on both the left and the right. Trump critics consider him complicit in the 
former president's most indefensible actions, while many Trump loyalists have 
maligned him as a traitor, partly to blame for denying the president a second 
term.

   A CNN poll conducted last month found 45% of Republicans and 
Republican-leaning independents said they would not support Pence under any 
circumstance. And in Iowa, a March Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll found 
Pence with higher unfavorable ratings than all the other candidates it asked 
about, including Trump and DeSantis.

   But Pence, who has visited Iowa more than a dozen times since leaving 
office, has been warmly welcomed by voters during his trips.

   His Wednesday audience included a number of Iowa Republican officials, 
including former Iowa Rep. Greg Ganske, whose time in Congress overlapped 
briefly with Pence's.

   "I'm here because we're friends," said Ganske, who represented the Des 
Moines area in the House. Still, he said he hadn't figured out who he was going 
to support in the caucuses. "We have a lot of good candidates," he said.

   John Steuterman, a 44-year-old insurance executive, said he was drawn to 
Pence's experience in the White House and was "tired of the negativity" another 
Trump term would bring.

   "Mike Pence is a decent man," he said. But asked whether he was locked in 
for Pence in the leadoff caucuses, Steuterman said, "I'm not married to the 
idea, but I'm going to watch and listen and I'm going to follow this guy."

   It was the same for Dave Bubeck, who lives in Grimes and praised Pence as "a 
super professional guy," "statesmanlike," and "a man of high character" -- with 
the capacity to serve as president. "But I think there's other good 
candidates," too, he said, adding he would "wait and see how it all shakes out."

   Asked why he wasn't sold on Pence, Bubeck said: "Maybe he's a little too 
nice. ... I don't know if he's tough enough for what we need right now. That 
would be my hesitancy."

   Pence's decision to focus on Jan. 6 reflects his advisers' strategy that the 
Capitol attack has to be confronted directly.

   His argument resonated with Ruth Ehler, a retired teacher from West Des 
Moines who attended the speech.

   "The Constitution is the document of our country and I stood by him on Jan. 
6 when he followed the Constitution. If that's where he feels he differs from 
our past president, it's a great point for him to make," Ehler said.

   And yet, Ehler could not say whether she was leaning toward supporting Pence 
in the caucuses.