Bob Vander Plaats, president of Family Leader, the group that sponsors the summit, said Pence did the right thing by addressing Jan. 6 head-on in Sioux City, even though there are plenty of voters he may never bring around.
“He has to own it and double it. Everyone has their obstacle, and this will be one for Mike Pence to overcome.
“Because the former president proudly claimed Pence was wrong and backed out and lacked courage, his supporter base will believe him. Pence is not going to win that issue with Trump’s base. But Pence isn’t trying to win over Trump’s base. »
Scott Reed, co-chairman of a super PAC working to elect Mr. Pence through grassroots organizing and publicity in Iowa, agrees. For him, Mr. Pence’s response to the voter was golden. « We put it in the can, » he said, meaning the tape will appear in a future TV commercial.
“There’s one segment of the party we’ll never have: Steve Bannon’s audience. And there’s still a lot of the party for us to do.
David Oman, a longtime center-right Republican strategist in Iowa who isn’t affiliated with a campaign, said it wasn’t clear whether Mr. Pence’s rebuttal of the voter — and his jab at Trump — would help in the caucuses , which are January 14th. 15, 2024.
“Will it be useful or useless in six months? We will see. »
“My personal opinion is that history will do Mike Pence any good with respect to what happened on January 6th. One day he will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Probably from a Democratic president.
What the voter says
In a follow-up interview, Ms. Bertrand, the voter who challenged Mr. Pence, repeated a falsehood that the lawyers who told Mr. Trump that his VP could reject states’ electoral votes had won previous cases for Mr. Trump.
(Trump’s attorney who put forward that fringe theory about the 2020 election, John Eastman, is facing disbarment in California. Mr. Pence’s counsel told him Mr. Eastman was wrong, and one testified before a grand jury investigating Mr. Trump on the January 6 riot.)
Although Ms. Bertrand was a Trump supporter in 2020, she’s not sure if she will support him at next year’s caucuses and said she wanted to hear from other candidates. Mr Pence, however, failed to convince her that she had acted correctly on January 6th.
“President Trump has been accused over and over again and has gone to court and won every case, so I assume that in this case, when President Trump said he had the right to challenge Pence on his decision, it was his This lawyers told him that — the same lawyers that had come out on top before.
“But whether I’m right or wrong doesn’t matter. To me, the idea Pence needs to know is that there are people in Iowa — and I think across the country — who still believe in it. This is a challenge he faces when racing.
“I didn’t feel like I was attacking him personally. I just wanted him to know, hey, there’s more of me than you out there.
