Someone Who Loves Mike Pence Should Tell Him He’s Never Gonna Be President

Mike Pence still wants to be president. This is quite a reach. Almost two years ago, his former boss’s supporters tried to kill him, and they represent a key Republican primary electorate. He’s also duller than dried paint, which doesn’t help his situation.

Politico details Pence’s “huge problem” in a feature that begins with his failed effort to salvage Blake Masters’s Senate campaign in Arizona.

“The people of Arizona deserve to know Blake Masters may be the difference between a Democrat majority in the Senate and a Republican majority,” Pence said, and he was right! At the time, reporters asked Pence why he’d endorse a candidate who rejected the legitimacy of the election Pence had certified. Pence avoided a direct response, but his actions confirmed he’s no Liz Cheney, who actively opposed election deniers, even if they were Republicans.

Pence backed Indiana’s incoming Republican Secretary of State Diego Morales, who called the 2020 election a “scam.” Politico notes that Pence campaigned for “at least 10 candidates who questioned the 2020 election.”

Politico’s Adam Wren writes, “The core of Pence’s identity has always been loyalty — to his friends, his wife, his faith, his party, his country. Then came the day he had to choose between his boss — the leader of his party — and the Constitution. And he chose the latter.”

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‘Not Wanting Mike Pence To Be Murdered’ =/= ‘Democrats Loooove Mike Pence,” AINSLEY.

Jake Tapper Tells Mike Pence It’s OK To Be Angry At Trump

Michael Corleone choosing to commit murder so he can protect his father is a compelling moral conundrum. Pence simply obeyed the law after asking noted Constitutional scholar Dan Quayle if there was any wiggle room for enabling Donald Trump’s jacklegged coup.

But now “brave” Pence is “politically isolated” with no “natural constituency.” Why, he’s like almost every vice president in recent history! (That gig is doomed unless you’re Joe Biden.)

At a moment when Pence most needs to clearly identify himself to a party that is beginning to audition alternatives to its divisive de facto leader, Pence seems stuck in some muddled attempt to be multiple things simultaneously. And nothing expresses that strained compromise quite like his tortured rationale about whom to support on the campaign trail this fall.

This is hardly the profile of a potential president. It’s more like a Scientific American feature about an especially spineless jellyfish. Pence has actually devolved from dithering around but eventually doing the right thing in 2021 to actively supporting election deniers in 2022. Next year, he might erect his own gallows.

A Pence aide pointed out that he didn’t campaign for election denier Kari Lake in Arizona, so he draws a fuzzy line between the likes of Lake and Masters, who’ve both promoted the Big Lie. Wren asked Pence directly why he’d campaign with any election denier, especially considering his personal experience on January 6.

“Didn’t mean I agreed on everything they ever said, or every position they ever took,” he told me. “I just was convinced that at a time of great challenges for America, at home and abroad, that we needed new leadership. … I’ve often said I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican in that order. But I’m a proud Republican, and I was proud to campaign with those Republicans across the country.”

Wren insists that Pence isn’t without some advantages, though. Unlike Ron DeSantis, he almost passes for human in the right light. He’s even got Chip Saltsman advising him in Iowa and other early primary states. Saltsman was campaign manager for Mike Huckabee, who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses, as well as Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Kansas, Texas, Georgia, and West Virginia. Saltsman could help Pence come in at least third in some of them.

However, those closest to Pence confess that they hope he spares himself the embarrassment of an inevitable ass-whooping. There’s talk of the former vice president running for Senate in his home state. “I could see him being majority leader within a short period of time,” suggested one Pence confidante, who apparently hasn’t noticed the living hell Mitch McConnell’s life has rightly become.

OPEN THREAD.

[Politico]

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