Two No Trump

TWO NO TRUMP

Rhetorical Recap 112

By Michael Cornfield

June 8, 2023

@MBCornfield?

???????????So, who wants to bell the orange cat?

???????????The number of candidates campaigning for the Republican nomination who are not named Donald Trump now hovers around the low double digits. Most of them have been leery about making a case against the twice-impeached once-convicted former president seeking “retribution.”?

???????????Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, previously recapped in this space, fudged, perhaps seeking a place on Trump’s 2024 ticket or in his cabinet should he win. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy have yet to give a declaration speech. Asa Hutchinson pushed back against Trump in other forums, calling for him to withdraw from the race and chastising him further after Trump was found guilty of sexual abuse and defamation. But Hutchinson fell silent about Trump in his April 24 declaration speech.?

???????????Enter Chris Christie, Mike Pence, and Doug Burgum. Burgum, the billionaire governor of North Dakota, puzzlingly opted to give his speech in Fargo in the same news cycle as the other two, thus depriving himself of exclusive media attention. And he did not mention Trump.

Chris Christie

June 6, 2023

New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Manchester NH.

???????????For his second declared run to become president former New Jersey governor and Trump adviser Chris Christie adopted the same man-in-the-middle forum setting as he did in 2015. This time he decamped from his home state to New Hampshire, whose population of Independents and non-MAGA conservatives gives him hope that he might win its primary after finishing sixth last time. Christie brought his Springsteen music and “tell it like it is” persona and, in a smart move, took questions for nearly two hours to show off his considerable capacity for town hall dialogue.

First, however, came a half-hour speech. Christie’s unironic theme (given his girth) was bigness and smallness. It unrolled inside a simplified review of great presidents and their great deeds, a standard list with Woodrow Wilson and JFK added, the latter for committing the nation to landing on the moon. Whereas, Christie said, big presidents lead the nation to do big things (and I was surprised that he cited FDR’s leadership in World War II without acknowledging the anniversary of D-Day), recent presidents and the rest of the Republican field have been small. Their constricted visions have reinforced national divisiveness. “Our country,” said Christie, “is getting smaller in every way…for the first time in history.”

The lecture whetted audience appetite for the unveiling of a big agenda. At times during the speech and ensuing dialogue it seemed that enabling a Ukrainian victory over Russia and Putin was what Christie had in mind. While he bragged on his performance as governor when Hurricane Sally slammed his state a decade ago, he did not take note of the connection to climate change or mention that issue at all, let alone term it big. Near the end of the event, asked about his first hundred days priorities should he win, he put school choice at the top of the list.

So the big/small theme was not carried to oratorical fruition.

What everyone came to hear was Christie unload on Trump by name. He obliged with his patented combination of legalistic logic and mock-surprise sarcasm. His competitors, Christie said, treated Trump like Voldemort, afraid to mention him by name. Whereas:

The person I am talking about who is obsessed with the mirror, who never admits a mistake, who never admits a fault, and who always finds someone else and something else to blame for whatever goes wrong—but finds every reason to take credit for anything that goes right—is Donald Trump.

Christie assailed Trump’s failures to keep his campaign promises, notably building the border wall at Mexico’s expense. While he was at it, Christie swiped at Jared and Ivanka Trump Kushner who were bestowed two billion dollars by the Saudis upon Trump’s leaving office.

To underscore the character contrast Christie repeatedly called attention to his own mistakes. He talked most of all about the 2013 (George Washington) Bridgegate scandal as a mistake that harmed his reputation. But Christie did not recount his off/on/off political relationship with Trump, a history fraught with mistakes of judgement that arguably harmed many others beside himself, well beyond an unnecessary traffic jam. Had he done so, he would have created a psychological path for others to disenthrall themselves with Trump, as well as manifest a concern for the general well-being to which he professed but did not exhibit in these passages.

Mike Pence

June 7, 2023

Des Moines Area Community College, IA?

???????????Traditionally, former vice presidents have been popular presidential candidates. But this is the first time in American history that one has challenged the president under whom he served. Mike Pence appeared on the stage with the tricky task of having to explain his affiliation with Trumpe so as to validate his time in office, and then explain the rupture justifying his opposition to his onetime superior.

This he did with great clarity and forcefulness:

January 6 [2021] was a tragic day in the life of our nation. But thanks to the courage of law enforcement, the violence was quelled, we reconvened the Congress. The very same day, President Trump’s reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol.

But the American people deserve to know on that fateful day, President Trump also demanded I choose between him and our Constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution, and I always will.

I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.

Pence cited the Article and Clause which left him no authority to overturn the election. He informed the audience that his son, a Marine, had reminded him that they took the very same oath to support and defend the document. And he said he prays for Trump every day.

In sum, Mike Pence put law enforcement, the armed forces, God, and the Constitution on his side, and Donald Trump on the other. Pence made no apologies for his time in the administration (which, curiously, he shortened to three years). He was “proud to stand by President Trump every single day when we made America great again.” No longer.

???????????Pence did not leave it on January 6. He provided three more current reasons to support his candidacy. He said that “Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn.” Not satisfied with leaving abortion policy to the states, Pence pledged to advocate a national ban. His second differentiation: he would pursue entitlement reform. And his third: Putin was no “genius,” as Trump had said on the day of the Ukraine invasion, and that was no mere “territorial dispute,” as an unnamed but obviously referenced DeSantis had called it. America should stand against the war criminal, Pence contended, and for those seeking freedom from occupation and slaughter.

?Much about Mike Pence as a public speaker remains stiff and banal. He talks about his heart as an intensifying device too often, his jokes don’t zing, and his attacks on Biden and the “radical left” are fuzzy and exaggerated. But in this speech he outlined where he stands with precision and authenticity. He also mustered the courage to describe what happened on the dark and historic day of the riot at the Capitol, an infamous day known by its date that all his nomination rivals have opted to omit from their declaratory addresses.

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