A former Republican strategist has a message for ex-VP Mike Pence: "You missed the fight."
Pence was in New Hampshire Wednesday where he told a crowd he was fighting for the soul of the Republican Party.
“Republican voters face a choice. It will determine both the fate of our party, and the course of our nation,” Pence said. “Today, I ask my fellow Republicans this: In the days to come, will we be the party of conservatism or will our party follow the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles?”
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He went on to call the two ideologies “unbridgeable.”
Without mentioning Donald Trump by name, Pence claimed populists favor “an agenda stitched together by little else than personal grievances and performative outrage.”
But former GOP strategist Tim Miller told Pence that the campaign had already been lost, and he wasn't on the right team.
"His polling is still in the single digits," explained MSNBC's Chris Jansing. "Was this ever a messaging problem for him, and would it be hyperbolic to say this is, win or lose, a fight for the soul of the party? Wherever you come down on this?"
"I come down on the fact that the fight for the soul of the party happened already in 2016, and the side that Mike Pence is trying to get on to now lost," said Miller. "And he got on board [as] the vice president, the winning side, the populist, nationalist, conspiratorial Donald Trump side. And it's hard for people, after a party has gone one direction for seven years, and all of the leading members of the party have cheer-leaded that direction, the Trumpian direction, and come out of a speech in New Hampshire saying, I think the party should go back to what it was in 2015, and fight for the soul of the party.
"You missed the fight. The fight happened, and you were on the field."
Trump responded to Pence's speech with an attack on Truth Social.
See the full conversation with Miller in the video below or at the link here.
'You missed the fight': Ex-Republican schools Pence claiming he's fighting for the soul of the GOPwww.youtube.com
