If I wasn’t such a cynical dude, it would almost be easy to feel sorry for former Vice President Mike Pence. In appearance he’s a mild mannered, affable sort of goof. In 2016 he was so far behind in his reelection campaign for Indiana Governor that Traitor Tot’s invitation to run as his Vice President was a lifeline from heaven itself. And after 4 long years as Traitor Tot’s favorite chew toy, Pence held his tongue, even after Trumpenstein told the J6 mob to string him up.
But now, with the post 2022 GOP in complete disarray, Pence sees his chance. And politically speaking Pence is playing this as well as he can. He’s dropping a book tomorrow, standard for a political candidate, in order to get his highly distorted view of the world across. Trumpenstein, being Trumpenstein, will announce his 2024 bid tomorrow, to steal Pence’s thunder. Pence has also started given carefully crafted interviews in the media, quietly but forcefully blaming Trump for placing not only himself and his family in danger on January 6th, but endangering everybody else in the Capitol as well.
Pence sees the sudden instability in the GOP following the midterms, and a solid base of only 30% for Trump, and a looming death match with Ron DeSantis, and has set his sights on the 60% of the GOP that is already so over Trump. And he sees that 60% sane GOP base, and sees a path to the 2024 GOP nomination for President. But there’s just one problem.
It. Won’t. Work. As I wrote a day or so ago, following the 2012 Romney loss, the GOP authorized an autopsy report to plot a way forward for the party. And it advised them to gently spend the next decade jettisoning their far-right racist base, as well as the far-right Evangelical base that was turning off younger voters and become more inclusive to minorities and alternative lifestyle voters. But while Chairman Priebus heartily embraced the plan, the Executive Council rejected it.
And now it is, 10 years later, and nothing has changed. And even with the upheaval in the GOP, Mike Pence is the dead worst candidate that the mainstream GOP could nominate. Because he’s a GOP dinosaur, deeply enmeshed in the Southern Strategy of the GOP. He’s a borderline racist, and a far-right Evangelical who has proposed a nationwide ban on abortion.
The GOP literally can’t win in 2024 unless it attracts younger and independent voters. And Pence has nothing to offer them, any more than Trump does. Unless the GOP puts forward a more progressive candidate, like Mia Love from Utah, then the GOP has no solution going into the 2024 election cycle. They can’t win it on the strength of the base, they need independents and younger voters, especially of color. And Pence can’t give them that.
I’d also add, yet again, that Pence was on his way to being a failed governor of Indiana before he was VP nominee and that he’s so spineless, he make Mitt Romney look like Teddy Roosevelt.
Ultra conservative opinion columnist Robert Novak was one of those “institutions” in DC politics. And sometimes a hack – for example he was only too happy to do Dick Cheney a solid and out Valerie Plame. That stunt cost the U.S. who knows how many tens of millions of dollars, as well as untold damage to our national security (Plame’s network addressed nuclear non-proliferation and was effective) not to mention the lives of some assets. My point in bringing up Novak is he was sometimes referred to as “A triumph of the embalmer’s art.”
Pence has Novak beat in spades! Some jokes were made that Pence looked like an embalmer/funeral director but I for one consider him the ultimate “embalmee” – a dude who has been (politically at least) dead for years but is so lifelike as in an animatromic machine that Hollywood special effects people drool over that he seems like he’s actually alive. Without that “waxy” appearance Novak had!
Pence likes to kill babies and drink their blood
Manafort recommended Pence. Why? Is there kompromat on Pence somewhere? Who holds it? He still won’t speak the truth, for the most part. I remember when 45 put his water bottle on the floor and IMMEDIATELY Pence did too. Why? If he hadn’t done so, what would have been the penalty? 45 put Pence in danger of death and yet….Pence says it was not smart that the DOJ put out a warrant for the document at Mar-a-lago. Really? Pence is not an honorable man.
I’d like to know how the DOJ was supposed to get back their top secret documens without a search warrant, given how hard they’d tried to get them, and for how long they’d been patient, yet perseverant. Pence is dumb, really dumb!
The abortion issue tore the gop a new whole. That whole subject needs to stay off the radar. Only problem is they are full of morons. Take glorious Rick Scott. Even after Mcturtle told the idiot to keep his mouth shut he went out and laid out his plan to screw America. Now I can’t figure out who was a bigger idiot. Him for his big mouth or the Supreme Court for probably the dumbest judicial assault on women in modern history if not all time. I mean I heard of shooting your own foot but those clowns in the Supreme Court took a rusty old pocket knife and cut their foot off.