Former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence speak at different events in Washington on July 26, 2022. Photos / AP
Former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence speak at different events in Washington on July 26, 2022. Photos / AP
On Tuesday morning, Mike Pence stood before a crowd of young Republicans in Washington DC, outlining his vision for the future of the party and calling on its supporters to avoid "the temptation to look back".
Six hours later and a mile down the road, the former vice-president's erstwhile boss,Donald Trump, made his own pitch for the party's future at a conference for the America First Policy Institute, repeating his disproved claims of fraud in the 2020 election and teasing the possibility of another presidential run.
"If I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to stay silent ... the persecution of Donald Trump would stop immediately," he told the crowd. "But that's not what I will do ... I have to save our country."
The back-to-back speeches in the US capital were the latest evidence of the simmering feud between the former running mates turned political foes and of their competing political ambitions, with both eyeing a bid for the White House in 2024.
In his speech at the Young America's Foundation's National Conservative Student Conference, Pence attacked the "aggressive liberalism" of the Biden administration and Democrats and said this year's midterm elections offered Republicans "the best chance we will ever have to build a lasting majority".
Pence and Trump at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 2, 2020. Photo / AP
But he also made a thinly veiled plea for the party to break with Trump, urging Republicans to focus on winning Congress and then the White House rather than fighting historic battles. "Now some people may choose to focus on the past," he said. "But elections ... are about the future. And I believe conservatives must focus on the future to win back America."
Pence is hoping he can overcome anger among Republican voters — many of whom fault him for certifying Joe Biden's election victory in 2020 — by taking credit for economic, immigration and trade policies implemented during the Trump administration.
"I don't know that the [former] president and I differ on issues, but we may differ on focus," he said in response to a question after the speech.
Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor who supported Trump, described the recent forays by the former vice-president as the "second coming of Pence" and noted that he was "trying to walk a fine line of not confronting his boss in public".
However, Pence has been willing to take on the president more directly by backing alternative candidates in statewide contests. Last week, he and Trump visited Arizona, where they are supporting rivals for the party's nomination to fight the gubernatorial election.
Pence is backing the Republican establishment's choice, Karrin Taylor Robson, while Trump has thrown his support behind former TV anchor Kari Lake, who also claims the 2020 election was stolen. Taylor Robson has refused say whether she accepts that Biden won.
"[Pence's] future is going to depend on how those candidates perform," Eberhart said.
Earlier in the primary season, the former president and former vice-president waded into Georgia's governor race. In that instance, Pence was victorious by proxy. He backed incumbent Brian Kemp, who had rejected claims of election fraud in the state and successfully fended off a challenge from the Trump-backed David Perdue.
Pence's role during the Capitol siege might make him an ideal candidate to win over those who liked everything about Trump apart from his refusal to accept defeat. Photo / AP
Some Republicans said they saw a path for Pence to win the Republican party's nomination ahead of the election in 2024, especially if he can peel off votes from those souring on Trump in the wake of the congressional inquiry into the January 6 2021 riots.
The divisions between Pence and Trump have bubbled to the surface ever since the former vice-president publicly admitted last month that the two may "never see eye to eye" on the insurrection.
When an audience member at a speech in November asked Pence who had told him to "buck" Trump's plan and certify Biden's win, the former vice-president shot back "James Madison", referring to the fourth US president known as the "father of the constitution".
Since then, the committee investigating the riots has uncovered evidence that Trump egged on his supporters even after they chanted "hang Mike Pence".
Pence's role during the siege might make him an ideal candidate to win over those who liked everything about Trump apart from his refusal to accept defeat.
David Tamasi, a Republican fundraiser who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020, said: "Pence is doing a very good job of articulating a forward-looking conservative vision for the GOP."
However, Tamasi also said he believed the parallel appearances by Trump and Pence could ultimately work to the former vice-president's disadvantage, by inadvertently drawing attention to "the continued enthusiasm gap between the two men among the party's most fervent supporters".
Polls continue to show that Trump is enjoying more support in the party than any of the other potential 2024 Republican candidates, even if his popularity dipped slightly following the January 6 hearings.
Support for Pence, meanwhile, trails Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has modelled himself as a natural successor to Trump.
Pence "is really speaking really clearly to the capital-C conservative community, the evangelical community which has always been a home of his", said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist. "But the third of the base that is all about Trump and only about Trump is not going to support him in a primary."
The main faultline running through the current Republican party is not whether someone identifies as a moderate or conservative, Heye said, but whether they believe Trump's allegations of election fraud.
"It's not moderate versus conservative ... it's who can be the most Trump-y or at least the most Trump-like," he said.
