Mike Pence
Article
Mike Pence is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between February 25, 2021 and March 03, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Mike Pence is a powerful person and Trump wasn’t against Mike Pence”; “Some competent demagogue (maybe Ted Cruz or Mike Pence)”; “Mike Pence seems like kind of a fan”. It most often appears alongside Democrats, Trump, Republicans.
Metadata
- Category: People
- Mention count: 5
- Issue count: 5
- First seen: February 25, 2021
- Last seen: March 03, 2026
Appears In
- A Modest Proposal For Republicans: Use The Word “Class”
- Mantic Monday: Grading My Trump Predictions
- Dictator Book Club: Orban
- Grading My 2018 Predictions For 2023
- Mantic Monday: Groundhog Day
Related Pages
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- Democrats (5 shared issues)
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- Trump (5 shared issues)
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- Republicans (4 shared issues)
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- Iran (3 shared issues)
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- Middle East (3 shared issues)
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- Republican Party (3 shared issues)
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- Ted Cruz (3 shared issues)
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- alt-right (2 shared issues)
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- Anthropic (2 shared issues)
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- Bernie Sanders (2 shared issues)
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- Budapest (2 shared issues)
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- capitalism (2 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Trump didn't win on a platform of capitalism and liberty and whatever. He won on a platform of being anti-establishment. But which establishment? Not rich people. Trump is rich, lots of his Cabinet picks were rich, practically the first thing he did was cut taxes on the rich. Some people thought that contradicted his anti-establishment message, but those people were wrong. Powerful people? Getting warmer, but Mike Pence is a powerful person and Trump wasn't against Mike Pence. Smart people? Now you're burning hot.
The crisis of the Republican Party will turn out to have been overblown. Trump’s policies have been so standard-Republican that there will be no problem integrating him into the standard Republican pantheon, plus or minus some concerns about his personality which will disappear once he personally leaves the stage. Some competent demagogue (maybe Ted Cruz or Mike Pence) will use some phrase equivalent to “compassionate Trumpism”, everyone will agree it is a good idea, and in practice it will be exactly the same as what Republicans have been doing forever. The party might move slightly to the right on immigration, but this will be made easy by a fall in corporate demand for underpriced Mexican farm labor, and might be trivial if there’s a border wall and they can declare mission accomplished. If the post-Trump standard-bearer has the slightest amount of personal continence, he should end up with a more-or-less united party who view Trump as a flawed but ultimately positive figure, like how they view GW Bush. Also, I predict we see a lot more of Ted Cruz than people are expecting.
I’m on the fence about how exaggerated this is. Certainly left-wingers love to accuse rightists of cozying up to dictators, and Orban fits the bill. But a pretty worrying number of US right-wingers are getting worryingly cozy. Mike Pence seems like kind of a fan, or at least not as hostile as he should be. Tucker Carlson is a big fan, and gave him a softball interview. Rod Dreher writes that “Viktor Orban’s Hungary, whatever its flaws, and whatever his flaws, is the place to be right now”. FT and NYT have more on this, obviously.
The crisis of the Republican Party will turn out to have been overblown. Trump’s policies have been so standard-Republican that there will be no problem integrating him into the standard Republican pantheon, plus or minus some concerns about his personality which will disappear once he personally leaves the stage. Some competent demagogue (maybe Ted Cruz or Mike Pence) will use some phrase equivalent to “compassionate Trumpism”, everyone will agree it is a good idea, and in practice it will be exactly the same as what Republicans have been doing forever. The party might move slightly to the right on immigration, but this will be made easy by a fall in corporate demand for underpriced Mexican farm labor, and might be trivial if there’s a border wall and they can declare mission accomplished. If the post-Trump standard-bearer has the slightest amount of personal continence, he should end up with a more-or-less united party who view Trump as a flawed but ultimately positive figure, like how they view GW Bush. Also, I predict we see a lot more of Ted Cruz than people are expecting.
In every election he’s been involved in, Trump has either outright said he won’t accept a result that goes against him, or at least given mixed signals about this. In 2020, he took various extreme steps to overturn the election, including telling state officials to throw out ballots, demanding that the count be stopped, trying to get the Vice President to certify fake electors, and the January 6 protests. Will he try the same thing during the midterms? He might not care as much about elections where he’s not personally involved. Or he might use the same playbook, this time with a much more docile Republican party mostly purged of spine-havers like Mike Pence. If he tries this, probably Democrats will protest; if those Democratic protests become unruly, maybe he’ll declare martial law to shut them down. “Chaos” doesn’t even begin to describe this situation.