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I Am Pence-sive Today
Ha, this was in my buffer from last week, so I figured I finish it today.
So, it appears that Mike Pence is considering a run for President in 2024. When he was announced as the running mate of Trump in 2016 I was unimpressed, and (not in a bad way) never impressed by him in his four years as VP. As the great Tom Lehrer song “What Ever Became of Hubert?” said in its intro, when LBJ was too ill to attend Churchill’s funeral and someone suggested they send Hubert and he said, “Hubert who?”
There are some who claim he did the US a great service on January 6th, and others who disagree, but it does lead up to a question … does anyone honestly want Mike Pence as President? I mean, is he conservative? Apparently. He was evidently a decent Governor of Indiana. He seems to be a decent husband, and a good Christian. He has (IMO) all the personality of a wet burlap sack, but that hasn’t stopped him so far.
What would his appeal be to the electorate? Was he spectacular in his debate against Kamala Harris? I didn’t think so. Are his stump speeches amazingly captivating? I cannot remember a single one. What would his policies be? What about his foreign policy? Economic policy? What Justices might he appoint to SCOTUS?
Are there any Pence fans or supporters on Ricochet that can argue why he would be a good President? Does anyone think that he would unite the party, keeping the new converts that Trump brought (allegedly), while not losing the suburban housewives that Trump lost (allegedly)? Does anyone think that he would not get Romneyed(tm) by the press and portrayed as weird and out of touch for his faith (they already started that with his attitude towards being alone with women who aren’t his wife), or that when that happens, that he would effectively fight back?
Perhaps that seems to be his greatest weakness (to me), that he does not fight back. He is stolid and secure in his beliefs and so doesn’t feel the need to fight back when he is maligned. He is a good Christian who turns the other cheek, but does that work in our culture to get elected? I don’t think so. Perhaps if he was a Democrat, then his faith and actions would be touted as amazing and inspiring, but because he is a conservative, they are weird, at best.
So, any Pence supporters out there want to take a chance on selling him to me and others?
Published in Elections
And I believe after the nomination he still formed a Pence/Ryan ticket, expecting Trump to fold. He was confident of something.
Dang! I think I’ve liked every comment of yours that I’ve read for the past week.
Yes, I tend to think that he was responsible for the constitution and running of the whole White House covid team. It seems likely that he himself put Fauci into the limelight. He’s quiet, and he’s focused and as I could see at the covid press conferences, can lie better than most.
Pence is kind of like a lower-energy Jeb Bush.
Like Obama? W? I will be 69 soon. From where I sit, too many younger people don’t have acquired wisdom and are social/political climbers. People would have had a younger Trump in his second term if these younger people hadn’t been such emotional putzes.
Pence makes Jeb! look like’s addicted to uppers.
If Trump had ignored his detractors then Jeb! would have been the nominee and Hillary would be onto her second term. If he had started ignoring his detractors only once he became president then he would have been impeached and unanimously removed as a Putin stooge and colluder.
What few have come to grips with, I think, is the extent to which whatever negative impression one has of Trump is the result of the concentrated and coordinated (and mostly false and unfair) propaganda smear campaign run against him, including media neagitivity and actual weaponization of government and IC resources. Detractors amplified have a tendency to not go away and to only get worse.
If his performance as president was otherwise worthy of reelection yet *those tweets tho* or some such, then the failure was in not snapping those voters out of it. Trump, as good as he was, couldn’t ever do that all on his own. Too many in our instituri=tions went all partisan and BAMN; too many on the right went wobbly and appeasey.
Everyone seems to want a fighter. Maybe I’m naive, but wasn’t there a time when that wasn’t the top credential for running? Maybe it wasn’t even in the mix? I know times are different and that our politics have devolved. I guess I wonder at what point do things get better? Can our politics be healed, or are we doomed to spiral to lower and lower levels until we take up arms against each other and flush this great nation into the sewer of other failed nations?
I admire Pence for what he did in standing up to the stolen election nonsense. Having said that, I don’t believe he’s likely to win the nomination or be elected. He lacks personal charisma, which has always mattered, but now seems to be an absolute requirement. Then again, who doesn’t have more charisma than a mentally-foggy incumbent with dismal approval numbers?
There was a time when every Republican nominee was not immediately labeled “the next Hitler”.
That time has passed.
A bit of research can probably document when campaign rhetoric shifted from “I will work for . . .” to “I will fight for . . .”
We weren’t always at war with cultural Marxists but now we are. Those who recognize this as a battle for the soul of America see it as a fight and want a fighter. Those who think it is just partisanship caused by undiplomatic politicians and “cults” want statesmen. The cultural Marxists want to destroy capitalism and the Constitution and replace them with their vision. Realizing that Marx’s idea of how to do that wouldn’t work, they sought to undermine our culture through a “long march through the institutions.” All are in their crosshairs: marriage, family, race, religion, education, government, history, art, music, literature….
study critical theory and the Frankfurt School.
Good points, HW. I disagree with you about quite a bit, but I agree with this, at least in part.
The difference, probably, is that I am disappointed in both Trump and Pence for weakness on issues of perversion.
I do find this more disappointing in Pence than in Trump. I think that Pence is a Christian believer and a real social conservative, so I expected him to take a stand on these issues. I don’t think that Trump is a believer, and he is socially conservative only on abortion, so I wasn’t surprised at his lack of interest in this issue.