Ok, it appears my other thread posits a hypothetical beyond the imagination of some Dopers. Let’s say the Democrats somehow take enough seats in Congress but they only impeach Trump and remove him from office. Who could Pence nominate as VP who could get approved by Congress?
A wide variety of people. Maybe Susana Martinez. Maybe some no-name Republican from the House.
This thread is only marginally more realistic than the last one. Do you realize that it takes 67 Senators to remove a President from office after he is impeached? The Democrats will have, at most, 49 votes by the end of the evening, and in the 2018 election, there are only 8 Republican-held seats up for election (I think). Best case scenario, if Democrats win every election between here and 2019, they’re still going to be ~10 votes short of removing the President from office, and that’s imagining a scenario where they win Senate races in Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Tennessee, and the like.
ETA: Yes, that’s how deep a hole the Democrats have fallen in and how high of a mountain it is to climb to get to impeachment.
Let’s say hypothetically the GOP also gets behind it and hypothetically not everything is done by party lines and hypothetically people don’t fight hypothetical situations.
Why would we include the line “Let’s say the Democrats somehow take enough seats in Congress” in the OP then? If the Republicans are behind impeachment, the Dems could remain the minority party and it could still happen. I genuinely don’t know if the OP understands the requirements.
I put more hope in Pence being in the wrong meeting at the wrong time and Mueller finding out.
Not likely to your first hypothetical. I don’t think Pence is allowed to speak to a woman without his wife being present.
Ignoring the almost 0 probability of this happening, I’d assume that Pence would not want someone who could or would challenge him in a primary in 2020, so he might pick someone very junior who would “grow into the job” in Pence’s first elected term. Not sure who that would be, but someone on the younger side, and not someone like Cruz or Kashich or Christy.
In one of the other hypothetical threads. I mentioned that it would most likely be Mitt Romney. Romney has been vetted by the two presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 and won’t be running for anything in 2024. A Mormon would appeal to an evangelical like Pence.
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I would not have guessed that. Lots of evangelicals feel that Mormons are a satanic cult, or at least deserving a similar level of contempt.
An enemy of my enemy is my friend (who I can stab in the back later).
Great Og on high! Is there any chance at all that the OP could succeed in getting you to discuss the topic of who might work as a Pence VP?!?
I mean seriously, take your conspiracy strategizing to the other thread and let him have this one to discuss the topic he’s been trying to discuss for like, a week now!
I still say Eric Cantor would be the perfect candidate. (From a Pence/GOP perspective.)
Heck, I’ll do it. President M. Pence and Vice President F. Guinea–it has a ring.
Um, more seriously, maybe Rick Scott of Florida? He and Pence seem to be on friendly terms, and it’s just a placeholder job until a Democrat turns them out, yes?
It won’t be Scott, he’s the Republicans bear chance for the Senate in 2018
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Pence wouldn’t have any real agency in this far-fetched scenario. It would be like Nixon “nominating” Gerald Ford in 1973. He wasn’t actually given much of a choice. The alternative was having no VP.
Probably some boring congressional Republican who isn’t going to be perceived as a threat to win later on. Like a Kevin McCarthy or some other factotum. (This could backfire on the Democrats. Gerald Ford was pretty boring and he almost won in 1976.)
You’re right that there’s no way Trump gets impeached without a least a significant minority of Republicans agreeing to it. Accordingly (speaking to the OP’s other recent thread) there’s no way both Trump and Pence get impeached at the same time. Even if they are both obviously guilty of some serious crime, they would impeach Pence first and allow Trump to nominate a new VP before removing him.
For the purposes of this hypothetical, though, the universe of confirmable VP possibles is very different if the Dems control one house of Congress than if they don’t. I think/hope that anyone much to the right of Susan Collins is a non-starter if the Demos have veto power over the appointment.
For that matter, the Democrats could simply pull a McConnell and refuse to confirm ANYONE, leaving Speaker Pelosi second in line until the next election.
If we imagine that the GOP still controls both houses of Congress when Trump is forced out, it’s an interesting question. I imagine he would pick some young up-and-coming extremist who could plausibly run in 2028 after Pence completes his two-plus terms. I think Pence is too much of a True Believer to pick anyone who might actually contribute to party unity or appeal to independent voters.
Things are weird these days, especially on the Republican side, but a sitting VP challenging his boss in the primary? That would be pretty much unprecedented.
It depends on whether it’s the unlikely event of Trump getting caught doing something that is clearly illegal/impeachable, or the darn near impossible event of the Dems picking up a 67 seat majority in the Senate (and a majority in the House). If they hold 67 seats, and are extreme enough, would they simply refuse to confirm anyone like with Garland? If they impeach Trump over some petty bullshit just because, they might bring it off, and if they held the majority in the House, they could impeach Pence over something and then a Democrat Speaker could be President. But I wonder how that would play in Peoria - refusing to confirm a Supreme Court justice is way different from blocking a VP appointment. Best Pence could do then is pick someone as non-political as possible, a retired general or something.
Regards,
Shodan
It would require something like a bomb going off in a Senate Republican caucus meeting, or a massively-more-“successful” Scalise-style shooting spree at the next charity ballgame. There just aren’t nearly enough Republican-held seats up for election otherwise.
A third of Republicans growing a conscience is just too far-fetched a dream to even discuss, apparently.