Pence says he is open to running against Trump

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We have to do something to get rid of Trump.

Maybe having somebody else as the Republican candidate might do the job.

I dont know of another time when that situation happened: a former POTUS ran against his own former VP for their common party's nomination.

They were paired in the first place to marry the two constituencies: the secular Right, with the Religious Right.
So if they opposed each other it be that rift in the party. Plus the added rift between GOPers who still believe in the Constitution (represented by Pense), and those who wanna dispense with the Constitution and to install Trump as ruler (Trump). So it would a major battle for the soul of the GOP that the GOP itself might not survive. The GOP would have to beat the crap out of itself before it nominates either of them ...to face the other party in the General.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 29 May 2022, 8:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

As long as he’s not elected…

It wouldn’t be helpful to replace the toxic problem with another toxic problem.

Think about the election of 1912. Split the Republican Party.

Roosevelt and Taft were Republicans who just didn’t agree. Roosevelt, a popular figure, formed his own party when the Republicans nominated Taft. Roosevelt took votes away from Taft, resulting in a victory for the Democrat, Wilson.

Trump and Pence could present a similar scenario.

Could happen that way.

Trump might even leave the GOP in a huff to run on his own third party ticket. Like he started his own version of Twitter.


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In fact one gets the feeling that both major parties are hemorrhaging on the inside and want to morph into European style splinter parties. But neither party wants to "divide its forces in the face of the enemy" because of examples like that 1912 election. The far left AOC/Sanders wing of the Dems dont like being married to centrist Biden, but they dont want the nation handed back over to Trump. The GOP was already rudderless when Trump found it. Divided between the Koch bros. libertarians and the Michele Bachman Religious right. Trump commandeered the GOP. But now wants to dispense with democracy itself alienating some GOPers.

One indicator is Ted Cruz. In early 16 Cruz told us all that Trump was a con artist and a liar who slandered Cruz's Cuban dad, and insulted Cruz's lovely wife. Then later in 16 Cruz worshipped Trump as God, and continued to worship Trump as the Messiah until...the last few weeks...when Cruz began to chide fellow GOP pols for being "too easily bullied by Trump".

Cruz spins around like a weathervane.

So if even Cruz is starting ease up on the Trump worship then... that could be a sign that Trump really is waning in relevance within the GOP.

But who would replace Trump? Besides Trump's own former Veep as the face of the party?

To me it is a horrible choice but a clear one. If the Republic is preserved you have peaceful means of undoing Pence’s damage. If Trumpism destroys the Republic it will be harder, we would probably need a bloody revolution and would have to recreate the Republic from almost scratch.

I am not convinced the the mixed results in the mid term primaries means Trump is not still the prohibitive favorite for the nomination. He was not on the ballot, there are state and local issues at play. Everybody not falling in line with endorsements is standard.

If the primary results do mean the Republicans have moved beyond the 2020 election I do not think Pence would be the favorite as his base is loyal but somewhat limited. DeSantis and Tucker Carlson do appeal to the fundamentalist demographic with all their trans agenda/grooming rhetoric and action. But they also appeal to the populist/nationalist group that Trump found. All the emphasis on defunding Disney is on anti trans which it was, but it also was a populist move. What Disney had in Florida was the exact type of corporate welfare the left has been complaining about for decades.

Why do so many not like Pence, or any reason in particular? I don't know much about him since we was just working under Trump, but what would be the reasons?

Because he’s too much into being Christian. He doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state,

I don’t imagine he’d be very popular in Canada.

The only GOP candidate that is subject to speculation that I would consider would be Larry Hogan (governor of Maryland).

Unfortunately, the MAGAts would eat him alive. He would never stand a chance. The GOP had a sane candidate in 2020. His name was Bill Weld. He was also crushed by the MAGAts.

What about that lady from Wyoming, Elizabeth Cheney?

I wonder how well Nelson Rockefeller would have done in the 2020s.

But why is him being Christian a bad thing?

Separation of church and state is perhaps arguably an important thing:

https://onlyslightlybiased.com/why-chur ... e-separate

https://www.themonastery.org/blog/why-s ... t-separate

My own view is that blurring the distinction between church and state in the USA may risk the imposition of right-wing fundamentalist Christianity on citizens. It bothers me that Pence goes on a lot about his religion because it suggests he'll be motivated to use his political power to promote that partiality and to disenfranchise and marginalise everybody else. Government is supposed to obey the democratic will of the people, not a deity that powerful people in government happen to believe in. Certainly I wouldn't be comfortable with a government who debated legal issues in terms of their interpretations of the will of their deity. I'd want legal issues to be debated in terms of the good and harm the laws may do to people, which as far as I'm concerned is the important thing.

That's true, but since the US has freedom of religion for example, it's not like Pence can do a lot to try to convert anyone, and it's not like he can change laws as President either, compared to the surpreme court?

Pence seems like one of those Christians who believes all other religions are inferior, and that atheists are abject sinners.

The imposition of religion was what the Colonists were running away from in the first place. I find this Fundamentalist stuff all too ironic.

I don't know how it might work exactly, just that I'm wary of it in the same way as I'd be wary of a politician who had a financial interest in a particular company if they had anything to do with decision-making over laws that might benefit that company at the expense of everybody else. Then there was a very high-up police chief in the UK who caused uproar when he said that HIV was God's punishment on gay people. Religious nutjobs could start taking the Old Testament literally like that and think they were being "righteous" by giving those who weren't on their wavelength a very hard time. Atheists and people of other religions than whatever Pence follows are probably right to feel apprehensive about what his beliefs might make him do to them.

Though it might not make a lot of difference in Pence's case. The Republicans already seem to do a lot of things that smell of religious motives, such as pushing for changes to the law in gay rights and abortion matters. And although I think Trump is secretly an atheist, that didn't stop him from pushing for laws that would be popular with the religious right, from whom he draws a lot of his support.