Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, on Thursday, former Vice President Mike Pence launched a powerful attack on the Biden Administration while exuding optimism that the GOP could bring the United States back from the abyss and “right the ship.”
Pence also defended his decision to honor the electoral votes certified by the states in the 2020 election, saying, “There’s almost no idea more unAmerican than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. … I understand the disappointment many feel about the last election. I can relate. I was on the ballot. But you know, there’s more at stake than our party and our political fortunes in this moment. If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections; we’ll lose our country.”
Pence began by noting, “I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican in that order and it is my great honor to be with all of you here.”
Saying he “never felt better” in his life, Pence recounted a story by Reagan:
Apparently, there was this farmer who decided to take his cow to market so he loaded the cow in the truck and the dog and headed into town. But on his way there, there was a traffic accident. And the cow and the truck went in one ditch and the farmer and the dog went in the other. And as these things go, after he recovered, they ended up in court. And the attorney for the other driver was questioning the farmer in the witness stand. And he said, “Sir, isn’t it true that a police officer approached you at the scene and asked how you felt?” And he said, “Yes, sir. I think that’s true.’” And he said, “Isn’t it true that you said you never felt better in your life?” And he said, “Yeah, I reckon I did.” He said no further questions.
Now his attorney jumped up real quickly and did what lawyers call redirect for his client. He said “Sir, would you like to explain the circumstances in which he made that comment?” He said, “Yeah, I reckon I would.” He said. “See, I was driving down the road and got in this accident. And when I woke up, me and the cow was in one ditch and the truck and the dog was in the other, and I seen the sheriff. And he walked over; he looked down at that dog; it had a broke back; it wasn’t going to get better. And he got his revolver out and put it next to the dog’s ear and he shot him, put him down. Then he walked over, and he looked down at that cow, which is in just as bad a shape and again, he mercifully put his revolver to the forehead of that cow and pulled the trigger. And then that sheriff walked over to me and said, ‘And how are you feeling?’ And I said, ‘I never felt better in my life.’”
“And it’s true; I am optimistic,” Pence asserted. He stated that despite the relentless opposition of the media and the crippling effects of the pandemic, the Trump administration was able to achieve things that Republicans had been talking about since the days of Barry Goldwater.
Then Pence segued to an attack on the Biden administration:
The progress in broadening our movement over the last four years was not caused by evolution of our ideas or the compromise of our principles, but really by putting our principles into practice, and hewing to our roots at the very core of the Republican Party. I mean we basically turned back to what made America great in the past and we made America great again in just four years. That’s the record. But how times have changed. In just 155 days, the Biden-Harris administration has unleashed a tidal wave of left-wing policies that threaten to wipe out all the progress that we made for a safer, more prosperous, more secure America. You know, Democrats have been so busy advancing their liberal agenda, sometimes I feel like the left hand doesn’t know what the far left hand is doing.
But it’s amazing the speed with which they’ve moved. Almost in a blink of an eye, President Biden has launched an explosion of runaway spending, $6 trillion, and counting; proposed the largest tax increase in 50 years; they’ve announced plans to cut military spending. And they ended construction on the wall, canceled policies that reduced illegal immigration by 90%. And in five months, they turned the most secure border in history to the worst border crisis ever.
On the foreign stage, they’ve bent the knee to international bureaucrats, announcing plans to rejoin the Paris Climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal. And when it comes to our most cherished liberties, they formed a commission to pack the Supreme Court with liberal judges that will erode all the God-given rights enshrined in our Constitution, like the freedom of speech, and the right to keep and bear arms. And when it comes to the most vulnerable among us, this administration has also restored funding to Planned Parenthood and for the first time in 45 years, the President’s budget includes direct taxpayer funding of abortion.
“During the campaign at our national convention, I warned our country that we had two paths before us: the path of freedom and opportunity or socialism and decline,” Pence pointed out. “And as we’re seeing right now, the agenda of today’s Democratic Party is so radical, that is taking us beyond just the designs of liberalism, to an agenda of national decline, abandoning the founding principles and values that have made this country great. And lastly, a recognition that we, the Republican Party are the last line of defense of the Constitution and our American heritage of freedom.
At the end of the speech, Pence recalled the last time he saw Reagan, thanking him for how he’d inspired a generation of Americans to believe in the United States again. Reagan replied, “You know a lot of you have thanked me for everything I’ve done for this country, but I want you to know, I don’t think I did anything for this country. I think the American people decided to right the ship. And I was just a captain, they put on the bridge when they did it.”
Pence asserted, “Such humility, such love of country. But in all the years since I have come to the conclusion that he was right. The American people did it in 1980. We did it again in 2016. And I know the American people will right the ship again when we win back the Congress in 2022. And win back America in 2024.”
Pence concluded, “The Bible says, ‘Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.’ And since the founding of this nation, among all the nations in the world, this is the nation founded on a creed that we’re endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. This is a nation of faith. And I know that faith has seen us through triumphs and tragedies in the past. As I stand before you today, I believe if we will but renew our trust in Him, that if his people, who are called by his name, will humble themselves and pray, He’ll do like he’s always done in the long and storied history of this nation. He’ll hear from heaven. And he’ll heal this land, this one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”