Mike Pence says voters ‘want new leadership’ after Trump launches bid

Pence implicitly positioned himself as a potential alternative for Republicans (Image: Getty)Mike Pence has said voters are ‘looking for new leadership’ after the Republicans disappointing midterm campaign – despite his ex-boss Donald Trump declaring his plan to run in 2024.Just hours after Trump announced another White House run, Pence declined to say whether he thinks the former president is fit to return to his old job. But he implicitly positioned himself as a potential alternative for Republicans seeking conservative leadership without the chaos of the Trump era.’I think we will have better choices in 2024,” the former Vice President told Associated Press. ‘I’m very confident that Republican primary voters will choose wisely.’ He said that he and his family will gather over the holidays ‘and we’ll give prayerful consideration to what our role might be in the days ahead.’Asked whether he blamed Trump for this week’s Republican losses, he said, “Certainly the president’s continued efforts to relitigate the last election played a role, but … each individual candidate is responsible for their own campaign.’Pence, while considering a presidential campaign of his own, has been raising his profile as he promotes his new memoir, ‘So Help Me God’, which was released on the same day that Trump made official his long-teased White House bid. If Pence moves forward, he would be in direct competition with Trump, a particularly awkward collision for the former Vice President, who spent his four years in office defending Trump, refusing to criticize him publicly until after January 6, 2021.’It wasn’t exactly the style of presidency that I would have advanced had I been the first name on the ballot,” Pence said of his unlikely partnership with Trump. “But it was his presidency and I was there to support him and help him. And until that fateful day in January 2021, I sought to do just that.’Pence said he hadn’t watched Trump’s full announcement speech on Tuesday, but made the case that voters are looking for a new, less contentious direction.’You know, the president has every right to stand for election again,’ he said. But after travelling the country campaigning with midterm candidates, ‘I have a genuine sense that the American people are looking for new leadership that could unite our country around our highest ideals and that would reflect the respect and civility the American people show to one another every day, while still advancing the policies that we advanced during those years of service,” he said.Trump’s campaign launch comes as Republicans grapple with fallout from elections in which they failed to wrest control of the Senate and are on track to win only the narrowest majority in the House. Those results came despite voters’ deep concerns over inflation and the direction of the country under Democrat Biden.Trump endorsed a long list of candidates in competitive states including Pennsylvania and Arizona who then lost their general election races. While Pence said he was pleased Republicans were taking the House, he acknowledged the election “wasn’t quite the red wave that we all had hoped for.”‘My conclusion,” he said, ‘is the candidates that were focused on the future, focused on the challenges the American people are facing today and solutions to those challenges did quite well.” But those still questioning the 2020 results – as Trump demanded – ‘did not do as well.”