The board of directors of the American Conservative Union struck back at the Republican leadership, passing without dissent a resolution in defense of Pence.
"The board of directors of the American Conservative Union, acting on behalf of over one million ACU members and supporters, do hereby express their grave concern that the Republican Party has abandoned its traditional belief that the individual has supremacy over the state," said the resolution. "Big government, in the hands of any party, threatens the rights and privacy of that individual. In the hands of the GOP, the federal government has grown bigger and faster in the last five years than during any previous five-year period since the New Deal, and the GOP's current leadership has forgotten the populist legacy of Ronald Reagan. As strongly as we support Congressman Pence, we just as vehemently oppose Speaker Hastert and other defenders of the status quo and urge them to remember that the GOP became the majority governing party only when it rejected Nelson Rockefeller's liberal wing of the Republican Party and instead embraced the courageous conservative leadership of Ronald Reagan."
