I don't get Mike Pence's presidential candidacy
The logic escapes me
This much is clear: Mike Pence is going to run for president in 2024.
The thing I don’t get is why.
The New York Times published a story on Tuesday that tries to answer that question. But, if I am being honest, I left it more confused than ever about Pence’s assessment of both himself and the state of the modern-day Republican party.
At the core of Pence’s candidacy appears to be an idea I find remarkably fanciful: That the average GOP voter is pining not only to move on from Donald Trump but also desires a return to the policies the party held in the 1980s.
Yes, that is really Pence’s belief!
Here’s the Times:
If Mr. Trump represents the populist New Right, Mr. Pence is preparing to run for president in the mold of Ronald Reagan. His team’s improbable bet is that a “Reagan coalition” — composed of the Christian right, fiscal conservatives and national security hawks — can be reassembled within a party transformed by Mr. Trump.
WHAAAA?????
Pence’s vision of the Republican party reminds me of the quaint old days of 2008 when, in handicapping the field, you could draw a variety of lanes and groups in which certain candidates fit.
John McCain and Rudy Giuliani were the moderates. Mitt Romney was the business conservative. Mike Huckabee was the social conservative. And so on.
Everyone fit into a box — neatly.
And the thinking about who would win was well established. While the middle and the far right would fight it out, the likeliest nominee would be the person who was able to stand in between those two ends of the party — McCain in 2008, Romney in 2012.
Then along came Donald Trump and blew it all up. Here was a thrice married, protectionist, big government, low taxes, pro-business, anti-regulation national populist. He fit exactly nowhere.
No one knew what to do with him. Jeb Bush — establishment conservative lane — blanched at the idea that Trump had any appeal within “his” party. Ted Cruz — social conservative lane — couldn’t believe that evangelicals would be behind a man with the, um, complicated personal life of Trump.
Everyone failed to grasp that Trump was an effect, not a cause. Republican voters were sick to death of their own party in Washington and wanted something radically different.
It wasn’t an ideological rebellion. Trump is not, after all, ideological in any real way. It was a tonal rebellion. Republican voters were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore — and they wanted a candidate who channeled that rage.
That Trump didn’t fit into a preconceived lane or box was a feather in his cap not a black mark against him.
Nothing Trump has done — and he’s done a lot — since then has done much to change that working dynamic within the party.
He refuses to accept the results of a free and fair election. His supporters stay with him.
He foments a riot at the U.S. Capitol over said election. His supporters stay with him.
He is indicted for allegedly paying hush money to a porn star. His supporters stay with him.
He is found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. His supporters stay with him.
Poll after poll after poll affirms this fact. Trump is not only the frontrunner for the Republican nomination but is, overwhelmingly, regarded as the face, voice and leader of the modern-day Republican party.
Which brings me back to Pence. And the rationale — such as it is — behind his candidacy.
If he and his team were being honest, my guess is that they would explain his bid this way: Look, he’s already been out of the White House for three years. If he waits until 2028, he will be out of office for almost a decade — and be yesterday’s news for sure. He has to run now.
Which, honestly, does make some sense. Pence is uniquely screwed by his circumstances. The former vice president of the United States doesn’t run for some lesser office — Senate, for example — just as a bridge job to get him to the next presidential election. So he either runs now or he waits until it is too late.
The fundamental problem for Pence is that the Republican Party he envisions making him competitive in this race simply doesn’t exist. The fight for control of the GOP — between Trumpists and the establishment — is long over.
The Trumpists won — as evidenced by the fact that the only candidate other than Trump garnering significant levels of support is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running on Trumpism just without Trump.
And with that victory, all of the conventional wisdom about what you say and where you go to win a Republican nomination got flushed down the toilet.
Seen through that lens, Pence looks like a black and white character in a color-movie world. Or a silent movie star in a landscape transformed by “talkies.”
He is running a campaign based on an idea of what the Republican party once was, not what it is today.
It almost certainly won’t work. Politics is the art of the possible. And what Pence is trying — reverse engineer the Republican party back 15 years — seems impossible to me.
As a Johnny-Come-Lately to Hoosierland when Mannequin Mike Pence was governor it was obvious to me that he lead from behind.
When influenced by Mother or his Evangelical cohorts, he was a disaster. He had to backtrack on an anti-gay bill when the state's leading employers squawked and conventions were canceled.
Had not he been picked by Trump to be his beard for the Evangelicals, he'd be just a other former governor.
One political aspect not shown so obviously when in Congress or the governorship was his joy in being a fawning sycophant, with no sense of shame.
Thank you for reminding me that Mike Pence is running for President in 2024.