Mike Pence does not mince words anymore. The former Vice President — once seen as one of Donald Trump’s most loyal allies — is now openly calling for Republicans to reject what he calls “big-government populism” before it is too late. His warning is sharp, specific, and aimed directly at the direction his own party has taken under Trump’s renewed influence.
In a new book titled What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience, Pence argues that the Republican Party has drifted dangerously far from the traditional conservative principles that defined it for decades. He says the GOP now faces “a new time of choosing” — a deliberate echo of Ronald Reagan’s famous 1964 speech — and choosing wrong could cost the party its identity entirely.
The book is not subtle. Pence directly calls out the economic policies of the Trump administration, including sweeping tariffs, growing federal intervention in private industry, and what he describes as a broader shift toward economic nationalism. These are not abstract concerns to him — they represent, in his view, a fundamental departure from the free-market, limited-government conservatism that he and Reagan-era Republicans championed.
“There are loud voices in and out of government,” Pence said in a recent interview promoting the book, “some of which have been able to influence the new Trump administration in ways that are taking our party and our movement far afield from those traditional conservative underpinnings.”
He was careful not to name Trump by name in every instance — but the target of his critique is unmistakable. Pence is talking about a Republican Party that has, in his assessment, traded fiscal restraint and free enterprise for protectionism, populist economic intervention, and an expanded federal footprint that conservatives once exclusively associated with the left.
Pence is urging Republicans to engage in “a lot of soul searching” before the 2028 presidential primary season begins. He believes the party still has time to recalibrate — but that window is closing. If Republicans do not actively choose a return to core conservative principles, he argues, they risk cementing a new identity that abandons the philosophical foundation of the modern conservative movement.
The former VP’s critique lands in a complicated political environment. Pence and Trump’s relationship effectively ended on January 6, 2021, when Pence refused to block certification of the 2020 election results — a decision that drew intense backlash from MAGA loyalists and effectively ended his political future within that wing of the party. His 2024 presidential campaign collapsed before gaining any meaningful traction.
That history makes his current message both more principled and, to his critics, easier to dismiss. The MAGA wing of the Republican Party has not been waiting for Mike Pence’s approval. Many Trump loyalists view his warnings as the grievances of a man who broke with the movement and now lacks a political base from which to lecture the majority.
But Pence’s critique resonates with a quieter faction inside the GOP — the traditional conservatives, Reagan Republicans, and policy wonks who have watched the party transform with unease. For them, his book articulates concerns that have been largely drowned out by the populist energy that has driven Republican politics since 2015.
The core of his argument is a question about identity: Is the Republican Party still the party of Reagan — committed to limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and American leadership abroad? Or has it permanently transformed into something new — a nationalist, interventionist movement that borrows the aesthetics of conservatism while abandoning its substance?
That debate will play out over the next several years as the GOP decides who leads it into 2028 and beyond. Mike Pence has made clear where he stands. Whether anyone in the current Republican coalition is listening is a different question entirely.