If Donald Trump wins the election, we know two things with certainty: 1) he'll implement the most racist, xenophobic, militant immigration policy this nation has possibly ever seen; 2) he won't have the attention span to preside over any other issues of governance.
That's where Mike Pence comes in and if you haven't been paying attention to what he's been saying, you're not getting the full picture of how wildly non-empathic, socially conservative, science-less, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ and downright scary a "Trump" administration would be.
Your first clue is that Pence views his role in the mold of a Dick Cheney—the VP who was given incredible latitude by a president who wasn't too interested in governing (sound familiar?) and then lead the nation into a war of choice under false pretenses. That's the guy Pence wants to emulate:
“I frankly hold Dick Cheney in really high regard in his role as vice president and as an American,” Pence said on ABC’s "This Week."
At the Value Voters Summit earlier this month, Pence promised to end government funding for Planned Parenthood and make abortion illegal again. Right, so back to the coat hangers, ladies.
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This summer Pence railed against the "judicial activism" by the Supreme Court that kept Obamacare subsidies flowing to some 160,000 low- and moderate-income Indiana residents. Sorry, if you can't afford health care, you’ll be on your own if Pence has his way.
Yet he's been very clear about the type of activism he does want to see on the court:
"For the sake of the rule of law, for the sake of the sanctity of life, for the sake of our Second Amendment rights, for the sake of our God-given liberties, we must ensure that the next president appointing justices to the Supreme Court of the United States of America is president Donald Trump," he said.
In regard to the string of police shootings that have continually taken the lives of black men, Pence has been doing a lot of soul searching:
"Trump and I believe there's been far too much talk about institutional bias and racism within law enforcement"
Maybe that's why Pence refused to call former KKK leader David Duke "deplorable."
On top of all this, Pence's distinguished record includes signing a right to discriminate law that allowed Indiana residents to deny services to LGBT Americans on religious grounds. The 2015 law was simply the culmination of Pence's continued disdain for gays. As a congressman, he opposed allowing gays to serve in the military, he opposed passing nondiscrimination protections for LGBT Americans, and he supported redirecting federal funding for HIV/AIDS care away from pro-LGBT organizations toward groups that sought to cure homosexuality.
Oh, and that reminds me: Pence has a very loose association with science, penning op-eds that labeled global warming "a myth" and declaring "smoking doesn't kill."