Before Trump merged his campaign with America’s foremost manufacturer of inane conspiracy theories. Before he gave the best ever speech to white people about what’s wrong with black people. Before X-treme Vetting! Before he said he’d only debate if he got to set the time, date, and moderators. Before the Obama is the founder of ISIS, sarcasm, psych! not sarcasm. Before the baby fight. Before the $400 million fantasy video. Before even the war with a Gold Star family.
There was this guy.
Mike Pence is on a mission to mend fences between recalcitrant Republicans and Donald Trump, but Trump isn’t helping him do it.
Mike … Pence? Oh, yeah! The anti-gay bigot from Indiana with one of the nation’s worst records on women’s rights. The one who was so sure he was going to lose re-election as governor that he signed on with Donald Trump. That Mike Pence. Whatever happened to that guy?
As it turns out, he wanders lonely congressional backrooms. Trying to pretend he’s part of a real presidential campaign.
The plan for GOP outreach started with Pence, his aides confirm, and while Trump nominally supports the effort, he hasn’t taken an active part in it. Pence, not Trump, picks who gets meetings and phone calls, and when Pence does speak with fellow Republicans, Trump does not send along guidance or specific messages for his running mate to convey. ...
Asked about the outreach process, Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said the Pence campaign would reply.
The Pence campaign. In other words, Donald Trump gives less attention to Mike Pence than he does to Katrina Pierson’s bullet necklace. Pence is Trump’s least listened-to surrogate.
“I couldn’t be more honored to be campaigning shoulder to shoulder with a man who I believe is going to be the next president of the United States,” Pence said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding, though, that he and Trump simply have “different styles.”
Shoulder to shoulder, with just a lot of space in-between. The problem for Pence is that he’s the connection to a campaign strategy Donald Trump abandoned almost as soon as he picked it. Mike Pence was Donald Trump reaching out to the traditional conservative wing of the Republican Party and selecting someone as if he was running a traditional campaign.
That idea is long gone. Donald Trump isn’t going to pivot. Mike Pence is a pivot.
Asked whether stylistic differences like Trump’s statements about Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a slain American soldier, after they criticized him during last month’s Democratic National Convention, or Trump’s remarks questioning NATO’s mutual-defense commitments give Pence pause, the governor reiterated that he’s honored to stand shoulder to shoulder with Trump.
All of this has to be frustrating to Pence. It’s not like he was sane or anything. He was out there making the world safe for bigoted bakers and homophobic flower shop owners when that stuff was still rad. Not to mention denying women choice in in case of rape.
Maybe if he fought a few babies.