This might seem like it belongs in the Pit, but there are scenarios (death, resignation, GOP fatigue with their leader’s criminality) that could lead to Mike Pence being the GOP nominee in 2020.
My sense is that Pence cares about the country. He may have views that I do not agree with, but I’m far more comfortable with the idea of Pence representing the US on the world stage than I am about Trump. He wouldn’t lead by tweet. I think he can read. Really, there are a lot of positives.
Trump is an incompetent psychopath. My fear is that Pence is a competent one.
I wouldn’t call Pence a psychopath. But I agree he’s far more competent than Trump and he would do a lot more bad things than Trump would be able to manage to do.
But on the whole, I’d rather see Pence as President. I agree he’d do a lot of bad things. But I feel that he would be able to avoid doing really horrible things, which Trump might cause through his incompetence. And I feel that Pence and the Republicans in Congress are probably already quietly doing a lot of those bad things under the cover which Trump’s loud incompetence gives them.
A Pence presidency would be as bad as another George W. Bush presidency. But there’s nothing that’s as bad as a Trump presidency. He bottoms out.
At least so far. The downward progression of Republican Presidents suggests that the next Republican President will somehow be worse than Trump.
As for who’s more likely to win an election, I have no idea. I can’t imagine why anyone would vote for either man, so obviously I don’t understand how they would pick one over the other.
If we were talking about a first term, I would usually prefer Trump to Pence, but:
- I think that there’s sufficient evidence that Trump has been compromised by other heads of state that he’s not only a national security risk but he has already so been forced into or lead into damaging our national security to a sufficient extent that we need pretty much anyone else other than Donald Trump, to start repairing things. If that person is Pence, ideally, he’ll be so busy doing that, that he won’t be able to do anything very Pence-like.
- I do think that Pence is less likely to win than Trump. Regardless that by all measures, including Trumpist and Republican measures, Trump has completely failed to do anything as President,* the Right has painted themselves so fully into the corner that they’re going to double-down on dumb right to the last breath. So, right there, you have 42%ish of the population and the electoral college moves that a ways closer to 50%. You also have to consider that:
[ul]
[li] Trump has failed to ruin the economy that Obama built* and the odds are good that it will stay that way through the election. The good economy will favor him more than it would Pence since his face is the one attached to it, at the moment.[/li][li] China will want Trump to stay in as President of the USA. They can and will sign an agreement to end the Trade War just in time for the election, sky-rocketing the market and giving all of that to Trump. In return, Trump will immediately drop all tariffs and neither keep nor use any means of policing the things that China agreed to in the deal. It will be a sham and the specifics won’t come out until after the election.[/li][li] Trump will repeat and amplify his strategy of race warfare that he used in the mid-terms (with the rapist, terrorist, Liberal caravan that was attacking our borders). He’ll frighten people into believing that it’s him or white genocide.[/li][/ul] - Trump will view a win of a second term as a “proof” of his greatness and ability to win despite everything going against him. At the moment, Trump listens to McConnell and the Senate; he lets them pack the White House with somewhat reasonable human beings; he gives in when everyone tells him that backing out of NATO or appointing his sister to the Supreme Court would be horrible and insane; he restrains himself from firing people like Rosenstein and Sessions when McConnell tells him that they’ll let the Democrats impeach and remove him; and so on. Trump is a risk taker. He’s gotten the lay of the land, he’s pushed and pushed, replacing Sessions with Barr, letting Turkey murder the Kurds, straight-up saying on TV that he’s a Nationalist who thinks that KKK has good people in it****, etc. He saw with Turkey’s invasion of Syria, as example, that the Senate was ultimately toothless and that they’re all craven enough to suckle his teat over McConnell’s if he can move the people in an election year. If he wins 2020, he will have no fear and he’ll throw all caution to the wind. A second term Trump will be far far worse than a first term Pence.
Mitch McConnell is too enamored of his own talents if he thinks he can safely allow Trump a second term. Be smart Mitch. Do your magic to get the guy gone before he turns from being your sweet Zaphod Beeblebrox into the terror that is Caligula.
- Except failing to derail the tax cut with his “wall” and “ObamaCare first!” declarations that nearly removed all Republican wins from the first two years of being 100% in power.
** I’m not sure by how much.
*** Nervousness around the Trade War probably acted to rein in speculation and capital outlays despite all attempts to create a hot market creating a labor shortage leading to a swath of failed investments and loan defaults. I think it’s reasonable to say that Trump didn’t expect his little war to flatline the stock market nor that the Fed would refuse to invent infinite money for him to toy with so I give him no credit for failing to fail.
**** That’s insane that that’s not hyperbole.
Is there a reason you couldn’t link to Will’s actual column? Because I’m not interested in people (even Will) talking about what he said, I want to read what he actually wrote, in context.
Pence cares about turning the US into a Christian theocracy.
You are correct, Pence, being an actual politician, is far more polished and diplomatic. He would do a good job of representing the US.
But I lived with him as governor for four years. I can think of a lot of negatives.
^ This.
Yes, he’s more competent, that’s the danger.
I disagree.
As governor he did a bunch of bad stuff I don’t have time to detail right now, but he’s just as pro-coal, anti-energy conservation, and climate-change-denying. He’s a religious fanatic. He not only believes homosexuals can be re-programmed into heterosexuals he’s an advocate of the practice.
If you’re the “proper” sort of Christian heterosexual you have little to fear from Pence… but if you’re not he is your enemy. He wants to eliminate you, if not with bullets than with “therapy”.
I disagree. Pence would be worse than Bush.
Sadly.
The spectrum of options we’re being presented with in recent times runs the gamut from earthworm pink to gas station ceiling crap stain brown.
Whee.
This is probably the column to which septimus refers:
Trump is no longer the worst person in government by George Will, Washington Post, May 9, 2018. (Yes, this if from a year and a half ago.)
The elegant and articulate Mr. Will doesn’t mince his words:
The following day, May 10, 2018, Ed Kilgore quotes and amplifies on this in New York Magazine:
George Will Calls ‘Repulsive’ Pence Worse Than Trump
ETA (Missed edit window):
Context: This was just a short time after that infamous Cabinet meeting in which most of the members present stampeded all over one another to see who could pile the deepest heap of accolades and hosannas on Trump.
Additional ETA: Those lines that septimus quotes in the OP,
come from the final lines of Will’s column, linked two posts above.
Less likely to win? Absolutely. He has no charisma whatsoever. Even Mike Dukakis outshines him.
Worse president? Not really. He’d nominate the same extremist judges, which is all he would care about. We’d have the boilerplate Republican tax cut policies and a return to the standard American foreign policy of the post WW II era.
Trump panders to the right wing Christian fundamentalists without believing in it. Pence believes it and in my opinion would like a fundamentalist Christian based government.
I certainly agree that Pence would be a terrible President and would do many terrible things. But I feel I can imagine the limits of what Pence would do as President. I don’t feel confident that there is a limit to how bad the things Trump might do are. Pence is in control of what he’s doing in a way that Trump is not so Pence would not stumble into a disaster the way that Trump might.
I also feel that we’re already getting a lot of the bad things we’d get from a Pence administration. I feel that Pence is quietly acting as a Cheney figure in this administration; he’s getting things done while everyone is watching Trump play with matches. We might actually be better if Pence was the top man and people were keeping a closer eye on him (in addition to the obvious benefits of not having Trump in that position).
Pence would be better than Trump. He won’t be making foreign policy or trade policy while constipated on the toilet via Twitter. When I worked in the financial markets. I had to monitor Twitter constantly for any stupid shit he would say and rock the futures markets.
He’d ram through as many right wing judges as he could. He probably knows their names. He probably would have pulled Kavanaugh and nominated another right wing clone.
He’s really anti gay but since Trump allows right wing bigots handle the anti gay stuff, the policies would be basically the same. The Supreme Court isn’t going to revisit marriage equality and the business wing of the party is glad that it’s settled. It can’t be good for business to have different marriage laws by states, that screws up HR benefits and makes it hard for employees to move to a different office.
He’d get a lot of the Trump voters but wouldn’t get the bull in the China shop voters or the ones who think government should be run like a business. He makes Mitt Romney look like 1992 Bill Clinton as far as charisma. Pence isn’t the guy you’d want to have a beer with, he’s the awkward executive at your company Christmas party that you just want to get away from.
To the question - Is Mike Pence less likely to win election than Trump?
Um, abso-frikin-lutely. Trump is all marketing all the time forever. All that fuss and bluster is marketing, his Twitter tirades are marketing, his pandering to various blocks is marketing.
Whereas Pence? Casper the friendly ghost? The only one that is more of a cipher than him is Jared Kushner, who is frankly a blow-up doll of a human. Can you imagine Pence standing in front of a crowd and getting them chanting? If, through some alternate history, Pence had been one of the GOP primary candidates during the last cycle, Trump would have dispatched him within seconds with some snarky comment, “Pence? Oh, I didn’t see him standing there - I still don’t.”
He’d be much worse. He wants a white, christian nation. He wants to declare we are an official christian nation. And he sucks up to the worst t type of sinner a bible-thumper would hate.
I’ve lived in Indiana while Pence was governor. He wasn’t bad. Wasn’t particularly good either. If a Republican ex-governor of Indiana had to be President, I would prefer Mitch Daniels, who had a decent libertarian bent and brought some innovative approaches to trimming the budget, improving education, and tackling problems in government. Pence is our standard, dull, and cowardly Republican. During his tenure Indiana did reasonably well by economic and budget measures. By some measures we’re a bit above average, and by some we’re a bit below, but neither can be credited or blamed to Pence’s bold and innovative measures since he didn’t have any. If he were President, I expect he’d hold the standard Republican pursuit of tax cuts, endless war, and ever-increasing military spending.
But how much more political power would he have? He’s still stuck with a Democratic House.
Pro-Tip: If YOU want to find a reference which is quoted at SDMB, drag your mouse over the quotation and copy-paste it into the search term of your favorite search engine. HTH.
I seldom click on washingtonpost links myself. Sometimes they work OK; sometimes I find I’ve exceeded my quota (which I think is Zero). I’ve given you a tip; can you reciprocate? What’s a simple reliable way to view washingtonpost articles without paying for the privilege?
Here’s a link to the actual column, which was written 18 months ago.