Pence Group Announces $20M Investment to Fight Populism

Former Vice President Mike Pence's political advocacy group on Wednesday announced a $20 million investment to defend conservative principles.

Advancing American Freedom, a 501©(4) organization advocating for conservative values and policy proposals, will hire new staff and bring on "faces familiar to the conservative movement" as part of a $20 million blueprint "for building out an organization meant to defend the sentiment that conservatism."

"Our nation was founded on conservative principles that have stood the test of time," Pence said in a statement. "The Constitution and this great American experiment must not be swayed by movements or personalities but must hold fast to the time-honored principles that have made America strong and prosperous and free.

"Many in the conservative movement have walked away from these principles, chasing the siren song of populism unmoored to conservative principles."

His organization will instead "hold high those principles, staying true to the ideals that have made America the greatest nation on earth and I know the American people will rally to our cause."

Pence, who bowed out of the GOP presidential race in October, previously pinged former President Donald Trump for his "siren song of populism."

"Should the new populism of the right seize and guide our party, the Republican Party we've long known will cease to exist and the fate of American freedom would be in doubt," Pence said last September.

"If we are to defeat Joe Biden and turn America around, the Republican Party must be the party of limited government, free enterprise, fiscal responsibility and traditional moral values," Pence argued in his speech. He compared the right's ascendant populism — generally defined as a focus on ordinary people's complaints about big government and so-called elites — to the left's progressivism, calling them "fellow travelers on the same road to ruin."