Mike Pence has spent his entire political career professing an unwavering devotion to the U.S. Constitution—the very document James Madison helped craft—and the republican principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and individual liberty it enshrines. As a congressman from Indiana, he proudly voted against the 2008 bank bailouts, standing firm against the Wall Street cronyism pushed by his own party’s president while most Republicans caved. Later, as a solid, no-nonsense governor, he delivered the largest tax cut in Indiana history, balanced budgets, expanded school choice, and navigated the donor class that funds the national GOP without selling out Hoosier values. When Trump tapped him for VP in 2016, Pence showed real grit: even as every establishment cuckservative in Washington abandoned ship after Access Hollywood, vowing to bury the MAGA movement the moment it faltered, Pence stood loyal beside Trump, refusing to jump when the swamp rats promised to end his career forever.

You’d figure a man like that—after seeing Congress rot from the inside, after being smeared as a homophobe by the Bush neocons for defending religious liberty with Indiana’s RFRA, after enduring the outright criminal sabotage and threats from Deep State operatives throughout the 2016 campaign—would finally snap when given real power. Here was a once-in-a-millennium shot at revenge: the flaming sword of executive authority in his hand, the oppressors exposed and vulnerable. Any self-respecting constitutionalist with fire in his belly would have swung hard, chopping the heads off the corrupt oligarchs, the warmongers, and the election-rigging bureaucrats who spent decades tormenting real Americans. Pence had every reason to go full scorched-earth on the swamp that tried to destroy him.

Instead, we get this milk-toast sermon: “There is no place in the conservative movement for antisemitism. We stand with Israel because we believe in right over wrong, in good over evil, and in liberty over tyranny. If the world knows nothing else, let the world know this: America stands with Israel.” What a crushing disappointment. The man who once looked like he might actually fight turns out to be just another neocon in evangelical clothing, more worried about policing speech and shipping billions overseas than draining the actual swamp at home.