Pence warns Republicans against populism, urges return to traditional conservatism

Mike Pence used a national television appearance to argue that the Republican Party is drifting away from the conservative principles that once defined it, and that the question now is not only how Republicans talk, but what kind of party they want to be.

In an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, conducted by Margaret Brennan and aired May 31, 2026, Pence framed his new book, What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience, as a defense of the older GOP coalition built around American global leadership, limited government, free-market economics and traditional moral values. He said that for most of his adult life, the party had stood for those ideas, especially “the right to life,” and warned that a new “populist right” has grown over the last four or five years.

Pence’s central warning was not just ideological, but institutional. He said the populist right would push the party toward isolationism abroad, bigger government and protectionism at home, while also marginalizing abortion restrictions. He cast the stakes as immediate for this fall’s elections and for the 2028 presidential race, signaling that the internal fight he describes is already shaping the next generation of Republican leaders.

He also drew a sharp distinction between Donald Trump’s political strength and the direction Pence believes the party should take. Pence said the second Trump administration has “got a lot right,” citing border security, the extension of the Trump-Pence tax cuts, support for Israel and a tougher approach to Iran. But he said the administration has also embraced parts of the populist right, including price controls on credit cards and pharmaceuticals, nationalization of American businesses, broad-based tariffs and a weaker approach to abortion restrictions. Pence said he gives Trump “all the credit in the world” for his hold on Republican voters, while arguing that many of those voters still support limited government and free-market ideas.

That tension is what makes Pence’s message politically significant. He is not simply relitigating the Trump years; he is testing whether traditional conservatism still has a constituency inside a party reshaped by grievance politics and populist demands. Pence presented the GOP’s choice as one between the Reagan-era conservative agenda and “the siren song” of populism, a debate that now reaches beyond memoir and into the next presidential contest.