Vice President Mike Pence urged evangelical Christians not to let complacency jeopardize gains achieved during the last two years by President Donald Trump in a speech Saturday at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit.
“The choice in this election could not be more clear,” said Pence, former governor of Indiana whose selection as Trump’s running mate helped secure support of what has emerged as the president’s most loyal voting base.
“While Republicans have been delivering on a common-sense conservative agenda since 2016 — in case you didn’t notice — Democrats have fallen further to the left than ever before,” Pence said. “Today’s Democratic Party wants to raise your taxes. Today’s Democratic Party wants open borders and to abolish ICE. Today’s Democratic Party thinks Obamacare didn’t go far enough, and they’re now running actual socialists for higher office. Today’s Democratic Party wants abortion on demand, and they want you to pay for it.”
“Now many of today’s Democrats and their Hollywood friends find it fashionable to mock the values of the American people,” said Pence, criticized as a “Christian supremacist” in a new biography. “In fact Hollywood elites routinely mock faith and family and patriotism, and many leading Democrats have joined the chorus.”
“We all remember Hillary’s basket of deplorables a few years ago,” Pence said. “Well, now the governor of New York recently said that America was ‘never that great.’ And my predecessor, Joe Biden, said just last week that those who stand for traditional moral values are forces of intolerance, including the dregs of society.”
With 45 days to go before the mid-term elections, Pence urged so-called values voters “to pray, to vote and to stand.”
“The other side is mobilized, and some say they are motivated as never before, but I say we must match, in fact I say we must surpass, the energy of the American left and their enthusiasm and their passion,” he said. “And if we do, we will win.”
Among what he called accomplishments of the last two years, Pence credited Trump for non-enforcement of the “Johnson Amendment,” a law that prohibits tax-exempt charities like churches from endorsing political candidates, and said the White House will continue to work for its total repeal.
“Finally, let’s keep faith that he who has ever watched over this nation still governs in the affairs of men and that as we hold fast to him we will run and not grow weary, we will walk and not grow faint and that he will yet bless America abundantly more than we could ask or imagine in this one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” the vice president wrapped up his speech.
“If we hold fast to that hope, if we keep faith with one another, if we forge ahead with confidence in our people and in our values, I know 45 days from now we will deliver another historic victory for America.”
“We will re-elect Republican majorities in the House and the Senate,” Pence forecast. “We will elect principled conservative leaders at every level, and with that renewed conservative support, with President Donald Trump in the White House and with God’s help, together we will make America great again.”