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Mike Pence sat on Wednesday in a cavernous machine shop that was humming with activity as he preached old-time Republican religion: the dangers of the swelling national debt, the need to overhaul Social Security and Medicare, the perils of price controls on prescription drugs and the necessity of projecting military might across the globe.

No more than two dozen Iowans had come to C & C Machining in Centerville to hear the last Republican vice president as he pursues his partys nomination for president. And the ones who showed werent so sure how many G.O.P. voters still believed in a gospel that his former running mate, Donald J. Trump, has spent eight years rendering largely obsolete.

The old conservative Republicanism, those are my ideals, Art Kirchoff, 53, an insurance agency owner, said approvingly to explain why he would vote for Mr. Pence in the Iowa caucuses this January. He had come at the behest of the machine shops owner, Gaylon Cowan, a friend, and, Mr. Kirchoff conceded, he wasnt sure how many of his kind are left in the party. Thats a good question.

Mr. Pence says often that there is no one more qualified to be the nominee and more battle tested than him, a former House member, former Indiana governor and former vice president. There is, of course, a former president in the race: Mr. Trump, the man Mr. Pence stood behind and supported for four tumultuous years. But when Mr. Trump asked his loyal vice president to violate his oath of office, Mr. Pence says, he stood by the Constitution.

By force of will, Mr. Pence grabbed the microphone at the first Republican primary debate this month more than anyone else onstage, speaking for 12 minutes and 37 seconds, much of that time devoted to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, the day he certified his own defeat at the hands of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris after a pro-Trump mob had ransacked the Capitol and called for his death. At the debate in Milwaukee, the former vice president stretched his airtime by demanding the other seven candidates onstage to his left and right attest to his righteousness.

It was a fun night, Mr. Pence said on Wednesday.

And by dint of his time in the White House, he holds real celebrity status on the hustings. On Thursday, at the Old Threshers Reunion, a sprawling fair and farm-equipment showcase in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, he was mobbed by well-wishers.

But then there was Jamison Plank, a 25-year-old pastor, who grabbed Mr. Pences hand and demanded to know whether he would vote for Mr. Trump if the former president was the nominee. Mr. Pence demurred, saying he was confident the question was moot, that Mr. Pence would win.

Mr. Plank was not.

Im worried that the Republican establishment is going to destroy Trump, he said. I appreciate Mike Pence. I appreciate his faith. I just dont see him winning.

The former vice presidents time in the spotlight at the debate did not lift his position in the polls, where he continues to languish in the low-single digits. He is far behind Mr. Trump, but also behind Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and a political newcomer, Vivek Ramaswamy, whose position on the issues and perhaps in national polling averages seems to inspire Mr. Pence on the attack.

Hes wrong on foreign policy. Hes wrong on American leadership in the world. Hes wrong on how we get this economy moving again, Mr. Pence said on Wednesday of his 38-year-old rival, adding, Ive been in the room in the West Wing, and I can tell you, the president doesnt get to decide what crises he faces.

The crisis he was referring to was the debt and Mr. Ramaswamy's refusal to grapple with the cost of Social Security and Medicare, entitlement programs groaning under the weight of the retiring Baby Boom generation. But Mr. Trump has said he too will not touch the popular social benefit programs for retirees, as has Mr. DeSantis.

And those three brawlers, who have elevated their battles with deep state bureaucrats, left-wing socialists and globalist hawks far above the green eyeshade concerns of federal budgeting, have for now captured the allegiance of 75 percent of Republican primary voters, leaving the more traditional Republicans in the race like Mr. Pence fighting over the crumbs.

If they started listening to the message and not just the hoorah, maybe traditional conservatism could rise again, Mr. Cowan, 53, said of Republican voters after Mr. Pence spoke at his factory.

Mr. Pence likes to say he was conservative before it was cool, a low-tax, small-government Republican willing to fight his own party. Mr. Pences positions have the same throwback feel as his pleated khakis, blue blazers and light-blue broadcloth shirts. In Iowa this week, Mr. Pence railed against the Biden administrations landmark legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices the same policy Mr. Trump endorsed, though failed to achieve.

In a survey late last year by KFF, a health policy research organization, 89 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans said they favored the plank of the Inflation Reduction Act that authorizes negotiations.

His warnings against overspending come as companies like C & C brace for a huge infusion of new work funded by Mr. Bidens infrastructure law, another achievement that the Trump-Pence administration promised but did not secure. Mr. Cowan said once repair and replacement orders started rolling in from the companies building new roads, bridges, tunnels and rail lines, its going to help our business tremendously.

On Thursday morning at Weaton Companies in Fairfield, Iowa, Cory Westphal, an executive at Dexter Laundry, an industrial washer and dryer maker, fretted that aggressive union negotiators could drive up wages and labor costs. Mr. Pence answered that he cut the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent, from 21 percent.

Beyond the issues is a more existential question dogging Mr. Pences candidacy: If a majority or at least a strong plurality of Republican primary voters believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, how can the man who certified it secure their support? Mr. Pence has tried to turn the liability of his certification into an asset, a profile in courage on the fateful day of Jan. 6, 2021.

It works for some.

Everything he went through with Trump, I just admire that he did the right thing, Julie Vantiger Hicks, 58, said after getting her picture with Mr. Pence at Threshers Reunion. Hes an admirable man.

But Mr. Pence was hardly outspoken among the few Republican leaders in the weeks and months before and after the attack on the Capitol who tried to dispel the conspiracy theories around the election that continue to divide the nation.

My objective once the violence was quelled, the Congress reconvened and finished our work under the Constitution of the United States, and after the president denounced the riot and committed to a peaceful transfer of power was to see to that orderly transition, Mr. Pence answered when asked if he could have done more to head off the division that he now faces.

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In Iowa, Pence Preaches Old-School Conservatism to a Dwindling Flock - The New York Times

The fundraiser was held at Lucas sprawling Indiana estate in Carmel, Pences adopted hometown since moving back from Washington, D.C., in 2021. Tickets to a private roundtable sold for $6,600 per person, while reception tickets went for $1,000. The host committee included Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, Rep. Larry Bucshon and Fred Klipsch, the stereo magnate, among others.

Hes now redefining who he is, said Smith, a Pence backer who has maxed out to the Hoosier candidate. He just needs to stay under the hoop.

In a memo to donors following the debate, Pence campaign manager Steve DeMaura wrote that even after weathering two years of attacks from Trump, Our strategy is not sexy. It does not take $150 million today. And does not involve trying to be a Trump clone or single-mindedly running to repudiate him. The campaign did not disclose whether Pence saw a post-debate bump among small-dollar donors.

Pences allied super PAC, Committed to America, also saw a spike in fundraising. The PAC saw an additional $250,000 flow in the day after the debate, Mike Ricci, a spokesperson, told POLITICO.

Pence has been polling in single digits in the primary, though post-debate polling has yet to be released. In Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state, he was bunched up at 6 percent with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll. But the fundraising bump is noteworthy for a candidate some pundits have left for political dead.

Pence, among the later candidates to announce, has already qualified for the second GOP debate, surpassing the donor and polling thresholds not long after he qualified for the first. Pences Advancing American Freedom nonprofit built a pool of 140,000 donors prior to his presidential campaign, many of whom are donating to him now.

Some dire headlines just last month raised concerns about his fundraising ability, but some of Pences biggest donors say they expected the timing of his candidacy would mean he would qualify for the first debate later than other candidates.

He raised a substantial amount of money in a short period of time and did it in a couple of weeks, but it took Nikki Haley and the other candidates months, said Art Pope, the former chair of Americans for Prosperity and a Raleigh, N.C.-based Pence donor.

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'Where did that guy come from?' Pence nets post-debate fundraising bump - POLITICO

Former Vice President and current Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence on Tuesday said that if elected, he would immediately end Biden-era telework policies,institute a spending freeze for non-defense federal agenciesand ban all federal funding of gender affirming care for minors. The proposals werepart of a laundry list of executive actions Pence said hewould undertake on his first day in the White House.

The former vice president remains a distant fifth place for the Republican presidential nomination at 4.5%,according to FiveThirtyEights national polling average. Former President Trump retains a commanding lead in the raceat 49.9%, based onFiveThirtyEight's polls.

President Biden weakened us at home and he weakened our place in the world, Pence said. With all humility, I believe Im the most qualified, best prepared candidate in this field, and we will be ready on Day One to move policies that will turn this country around, and our Day One executive action plan is an attempt to lay out a vision for those initial actions we believe will begin to set our nation right.

First, Pence vowed to reverse an automatic 1% decrease in defense spending that would take hold if lawmakers cannot reach a full-year appropriations deal by May 2024 and, conversely, freeze non-defense spending, which he argued has contributed to inflation. However, inflation has been on the decline since last fall.

Well get runaway spending under control by freezing non-defense federal spending on Day One of my administration, he said. Well also reverse all of the Biden administrations energy executive orders and unleash American energy and open up access to all of Americas reserves and through leasing programs for oil and natural gas.

Pence also suggested that he would roll back the telework policies developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued during the Biden administration, saying he would end work from home for federal workers. Pences plan was light on details, however.

Americans around the country have gotten back to work since the pandemic ended and are working to get this economy moving again, his campaign wrote in a blog post Tuesday. Meanwhile, federal employees are still working from home at record rates . . . Federal bureaucrats should be working just as hard as the American workers they are supposedly serving. Thats why President Pence will issue an executive order to get federal employees back to work immediately.

A number of proposals Pence revealed Tuesday on health care issues could also have ramifications for federal workers. The former vice president said he would end policies within the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments aimed at preserving federal workers and veterans access to abortions, as well as endthe Justice Departments work in support of litigation challenging state abortion bans. And he said the federal government would cease funding of programs that help transgender minors receive gender-affirming care.

I would end any fundingdirect or indirectfor child transgender procedures anywhere in the United States, and we would block funding to schools that promote child transgender chemical or physical procedures. We simply have got to protect our kids from the radical gender agenda of the American left, as well as reinstate protections for religious groups of any persuasion in federal contracting.

Once again, the details of Pences plan remained vague, but such a measure could endanger federal workers and their families access to gender affirming care through their employer-sponsored insurance, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services official guidance to medical providers states that early gender affirming care is crucial to overall health, the Pence campaign wrote. President Pence will reverse these misguided policies on Day One and make it clear that government health agencies will never advocate for radical transgender ideology. President Pence will also issue executive orders directing all agencies to defund any programs that accept federal money and provide surgical or chemical gender reassignment on children in the U.S. or around the world.

Transgender advocates argue that conservatives vastly overestimate the number of people receiving gender affirming care, and in fact, the process to gain access to treatments is often long and arduous.

Notably absent from Pences Day One agenda is any mention of a systematic effort to make it easier to fire federal workers or target the so-called deep state, such as Schedule F, an abortive effort at the end of the Trump administration to make federal workers in policy-related positions effectively at-will employees. Both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have said they would reinstitute the proposal immediately upon taking office, and the Heritage Foundation has endorsed the idea as part of its 1,000-page presidential transition handbook.

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Pence 'Day 1' plan includes a telework rollback, spending freeze ... - GovExec.com

Former Vice President Mike Pence sought once more on Wednesday to define himself as the staunchest opponent of abortion in the Republican field, citing his faith and taking a swipe at the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who has tried to pull off a difficult balancing act on the issue.

To be honest with you, Nikki youre my friend, but consensus is the opposite of leadership, Mr. Pence said, criticizing Ms. Haley for saying there needed to be congressional consensus between Republicans and Democrats before the federal government could play a role in restricting abortion. Its not a states-only issue. Its a moral issue.

Ms. Haley, who often calls herself unapologetically pro-life, fired back that Mr. Pence was being dishonest about what was politically possible. When youre talking about a federal ban, be honest with the American people, she said, arguing that the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate meant that no Democratic or Republican president would be able to set abortion policy. Do not make women feel like they have to decide on this issue.

The exchange underscored the deep and emotional divide that has emerged among Republicans since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Since that ruling last year, Republican-led states have rushed to outlaw or impose stringent restrictions on abortion, to a fierce electoral backlash. Surveys show record numbers of Americans support at least some level of access to abortion, and some of the top Republican presidential candidates have waffled or struggled with their positions in light of that fact.

On the debate stage, candidates insisted they were pro-life but did not agree on whether to support a federal ban at 15 weeks gestation. Still, some tried to use the moment to break out.

We cannot let states like California, New York, Illinois have abortions on demand, said Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, who also claimed falsely that those states allow abortion without limits until birth.

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Mike Pence and Nikki Haley Clash Over Abortion at GOP Debate - The New York Times

An hour into Wednesday nights Republican Presidential debate, which took place without the front-runner, Donald Trump, a simple, altogether predictable question unsettled the proceedings. If former President Trump is convicted in a court of law, Fox News Bret Baier asked the candidates, Would you still support him as your partys choice? Please raise your hand if you would.

Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, looked left, then right, seeming unsure; Mike Pence, on whom the complications of Trumps alleged crimes hang heaviest, hesitated, too. After a moment, both raised their hands, a grudging show of support for their President and rival. In the end, of the eight candidates who qualified for the debate stage, only Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, kept his hand down. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, half raised an index finger, which he flicked in the air while shaking his head, a gesture, he later said, meant to ask the moderators for a chance to explain why he would not support Trump. For a generation, Republican politicians have appeared on Fox News and known what to say to their base. But, in last nights debate, there was uncertainty on Ukraine, climate change, even abortion. The Presidential candidates no longer seemed so sure that they knew what their voters wanted them to say.

The line going into the evening had been that the assembled Presidential candidates looked a little small and lacking in star wattage without Trump. Could you really imagine any of them winning this thing? Maybe the real action was on Tucker Carlsons X account, where a pre-recorded video of Trump being very gently interviewed was aired as counterprogramming. But a more interesting possibility emergedthat Trump had opened up fissures in conservatism that neither he nor any of his rivals really knew how to close. An early question about climate change (which the hosts introduced by giving a brief but admirable rundown of this summers extreme weather events) gave an indication of how the night would go. Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur turned anti-woke crusader, declared that the climate-change agenda is a hoax. Nikki Haley, who was formerly Trumps U.N. Ambassador and the governor of South Carolina, counterpunched: Is climate change real? Yes, it is.

Those two candidates formed the debates poles. Ramaswamywho seemed to personally annoy just about everyone else on the stage (Christie, at one point, dismissed him as a guy who sounds like ChatGPT)gleefully took up the MAGA banner. Haley, who seemed to sense a vacuum, went after Trump for hypocrisy on spending and for being the most disliked politician in America. On abortion, DeSantiss defense of Floridas six-week abortion ban, and Mike Pences unsupported insistence that seventy per cent of the country backed a national pro-life agenda were met by Haleys get-a-grip realism. But seventy per cent of the Senate does not, she said.

It wasnt as if all of the Republican talking points had disappeared (there was general enthusiasm for a literal war on drug cartels), but, on certain high-profile issues, a genuine debate unfolded. After Ramaswamy made the case for ending U.S. support for Ukraine, Christie gave a characteristically gruesome evocation of the horrors of Russian war crimes. Thousands of Ukrainian children, Christie said, have been abducted, stolen, ripped from their mothers and fathers, and brought back to Russia to be programmed to fight their own families. They have gouged out peoples eyes, cut off their ears, and shot people in the back of the headmenand then gone into those homes and raped the daughters and the wives who were left as widows and orphans. The most unexpected thought entered my head. Was this, against all odds, a good debate? And the truth is, without any of the candidates especially impressing, it sort of was.

All seven men onstage wore dark-blue suits with white shirts and red tiesin costume, at least, Trump was everywhere. In the center of the stage were DeSantis and Ramaswamy, running second and third in the polls, though each far behind Trump. Both are fast talkers, tending toward one and a quarter speed, and terrible smilers: Ramaswamy oversmiles, all teeth and gums, and DeSantis sort of winces. The stakes were perhaps the highest for DeSantis, once considered Trumps co-front-runner, whose position has been eroding since he announced in May. His speeches, which seemed the most rehearsed of anyones onstage, groped for an audience that he could never quite find. The old crowd-pleasers failed him. At one point, DeSantis practically shouted George Soros, drawing only a smattering of applause. When he tried to pivot away from a politically tricky question about January 6th by thundering, We need to end the weaponization of these federal agents, Baier and his co-moderator, Martha MacCallum, bellowed back, Thats not the question! The Florida governor said, a little meekly, I know.

Both DeSantis and Ramaswamy are young politicians (forty-four and thirty-eight years old, respectively) who have surged to the front of the field by rhyming their politics with Trumps. Last night, they were flanked by older, more obviously scarred Republicans, many of whom had twined their fates with Trump earlier in his history and come to regret it. Pence, most scarred of all, got a nice moment when the moderators asked whether he had done the right thing by standing up to Trump on January 6th. Absolutely, he did the right thing, Senator Tim Scott, of South Carolina, said. Christie added, Mike Pence stood for the Constitution, and he deserves not grudging credithe deserves our thanks as Americans. But Pences worn applause lines landed as flatly as some of DeSantiss. When he criticized Democrats for defunding the police, there were crickets. Haleys opening remarks, which attacked the Trump Administration for having swelled the deficit, seemed to capture the pathos of Pences position. He, despite having broken with his former boss, was the one forced to defend the Trump Administrations bad policies, while Trump himself, routing the field, had simply decided not to attend.

Ever since Trumps ascent, nearly a decade ago, both his supporters and opponents have entertained a fantasy vision of the Republican Party, in which the conflict between the MAGA-verse and Trumps opponents would be firmly settled, with one side taking over the Party for good. But Trumps success has been partialenough to raise doubts about the old consensus, on everything from foreign policy to deficits, without really establishing a new one. And so, beneath the iron grip that Trump has on the polls is the interesting mess of a party on display in last nights debate, in which everyone vowed himself a staunch conservative but no one seemed to really agree on what conservatism means.

In the run-up to the debate, there had been reminders of the worse fates that Pence, Haley and Christie had ducked: more than a dozen of Trumps co-conspirators were indicted in Georgia, alongside the former President, for allegedly participating in his scheme to reverse the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election; earlier in the day, Rudy Giuliani was photographed apparently headed into a bail bondsmans office. Perhaps fortified by those images, the Republican candidates were, as a group, more openly critical of Trump than leaders in their party have been in a very long time. But they also showed that they havent yet managed the critical next step: articulating a plausible different direction.

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A Chaotic Display of Conservatism at the First Republican Debate - The New Yorker