Mike Pence’s ‘Progressive GOP’ Delusion
Republicans’ “leftward” economic drift has been overstated, to say the least.
The now-irrelevant Mike Pence still knows how to get back in the news.
The former vice president has a new book out warning America of the GOP’s “dangerous” lurch to progressivism. Among his complaints is that he believes his old party is at risk of abandoning the fiscal conservatism it was built on in favor of left-wing economics.
“Some right-wing populists have decided that American families need the support of industrial policies and the welfare state,” he argues in his new book. He claims all this rhetoric amounts to “a warmed-over version of big-government Republicanism.”
It’s become fashionable to speak of a realignment in American politics, with Republicans now promoting economic populism to support the working class while the Democrats go full neoliberal to please financial elites. Many 2028 Republicans like to indulge this image. And a number of conservative intellectuals and commentators want to make it a permanent reality.
Even though President Donald Trump departs from conservative orthodoxy in many ways, the MAGAfied Republican Party is still fiscally conservative. The populist rhetoric is mostly just talk. When push comes to shove, Republicans and conservative commentators oppose more taxes and regulations. Contrary to Pence’s hysteria, they’re not going to implement Zohran Mamdani’s economic agenda.
We can see this with Trump himself. He did upend the standard conservative views on free trade. The president has never shied from his support for protectionism and enacted a radical tariff regime with his second administration. That upset Pence and other traditional conservatives.
But, besides that, his economic policies aren’t too different from conservative orthodoxy. The One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump’s primary legislative accomplishment, made the tax cuts from his first term permanent. His admin has also made it easier for corporations and individuals to get tax breaks. The president has pursued an aggressive deregulatory agenda that eliminated over 600 federal regulations in 2025 alone.
This is all typical of a Republican administration. There is little indication of the administration adopting measures to expand the welfare state or impose new taxes on billionaires to pay for industrial policy.
One of the New Right’s favorite Republicans also illustrates how Trump’s party has stuck to its old guns. In spite of his bruising primary defeat to Trump, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to be one of the most admired conservatives in the country. He’s arguably the Republican most eager to translate the latest ideas from the New Right into policy. But his main issue right now isn’t industrial policy or expanding the welfare state. He’s turned to a remarkably libertarian idea to build up clout potentially for another presidential run: banning property taxes.
He’s made his mark as one of the foremost proponents of this idea. The governor relies on standard conservative lines to advocate for his policy. He believes these taxes harm the middle-class. They also undermine the concept of property ownership and make the state, the bogeyman of libertarians, the true master of your home. It’s a proposal that could’ve easily come from Tea Party Republicans, with their desire for less taxation and less government.
Republicans all over the country are embracing this idea far more any economic populist idea. Texas’s Gov. Greg Abbott made property taxes one of the key issues in his reelection campaign this year. At least 13 states, most of them red, are looking at ways to significantly curb property taxes. None of them are looking at ways to expand government to provide more services and entitlements to their people. And none of them are looking at hiking taxes to punish businesses and corporations to serve some poorly-defined common good.
But there is a change in rhetoric when Republicans have to defend this policy. DeSantis adopted Mamdani language when confronted with questions on how the state of Florida will make up for the lost revenue. “In places like Miami, you have some of the wealthiest people in the history of humanity buying homes here,” DeSantis told reporters. “They’re paying tax. Why not give your middle class residents a break on their property tax?”
He also argued: “Tax someone rich. If some billionaire from Brazil is buying, tax them. Good, that’s fine with me…. I’m looking out for the Floridians here.”
Those statements inspired a number of headlines in Florida that the governor is now embracing a “tax-the-rich” policy. Democrats in the state legislature even claimed DeSantis now sounds awfully like Mamdani and drew up legislation to tax the wealthiest Floridians.
But DeSantis isn’t actually embracing the progressive idea. It was just a rhetorical flourish on the bill to significantly cut property taxes. Under the measure, those who buy a second home and out-of-state residents would still have to pay the tax. Primary residences would be the recipients of property tax relief. DeSantis just imagines wealthy foreign billionaires will make up the difference with the properties they own. He’s not calling for any specific tax on them besides what’s stated in the bill. It’s hardly a progressive proposal.
DeSantis proves that Pence’s worries are grossly exaggerated. A Republican here and there may suggest some progressive proposal to further regulate the market or ponder taxing the rich more. But when it comes to policymaking, they’re just as committed to cutting taxes and regulations.
One could argue that they’re more reckless in this pursuit than ever before. The enthusiasm for banning property taxes could strip rural counties of their public services and require new, more onerous taxes to make up for the cost. But the popularity of the proposal is enough to justify it.
Pence is right to be worried that his brand of conservatism is no longer in style. Republican voters no longer want a party that worships immigrants and free trade, and insists the solution to every problem is limited government and more wars. But he’s wrong about how far to the “left” it’s moved on economics. A party setting out to wipe out property taxes and regulations is not a party interested in socialist economics.
Trumpism is “big government Republicanism” of an altogether different stripe.
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