"I frankly hold Dick Cheney in very high regard in his role as vice president," Pence said when asked in an interview with ABC in September who his vice-presidential role model would be.
Adding he would be, "a very active vice president" like Cheney, who served under President George W. Bush.
This is the first in a series of diaries on the men and women who will make up Trump’s governing team. In addition to his cabinet, the series will identify and profile other key figures such as agency and department heads along with his key advisers to help better illuminate what we might expect from a Trump presidency (oops, threw up in my mouth again) based on the players.
I suspect Trump will spend his first 100 days trying to figure out where all the bathrooms are so it can be expected that Mike Pence will be taking the lead in the first months. We all thought George Bush was out of his depth when he got the job but the oval office has never had someone sitting there like this guy when it comes to a lack of understanding as to how our federal government is supposed to work to serve its people. Mike Pence will most likely try to fill the empty vessel of his boss with the most extreme version of conservative politics.
Let’s take a look at Trumps #2 guy Mike Pence, who is also the chair of Trump’s transition team. Pence will be the person most responsible for assembling what looks like may be made up of some of the most heinous Republican figures from the past, I will call them the usual conservative suspects. (The information below is attributed to a variety of sources including Wikipedia, Huffington Post, Business Insider and Rolling Stone)
- Mike Pence was a conservative radio talk show host prior to being elected to the House of Representatives in 2000 representing Indiana’s 2nd congressional district. Always far right in his ideology, he was a leading member of the Tea Party caucus.
- In 2012 Pence was elected the 50th Governor and he successfully advocated the largest tax cut in Indiana's history. Indiana’s economy is ranked #36 in the US and has one of the slowest growth rates a 0.4 compared the national average of 2.2.
- In 2013, Pence signed a law blocking local governments in Indiana from requiring businesses to offer higher wages or benefits beyond those required by federal law.
- As governor Pence also signed controversial abortion bills, a bill that forbids abortion on the basis of fetal chromosomal abnormalities, including Down syndrome, among other factors. The law further bans fetal-tissue donation requiring any aborted or miscarried fetus to be cremated or buried.
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In 2015, Pence signed a "religious freedom" law, whose sweeping language permitted Indiana businesses to refuse to serve LGBT Americans. Backlash against the law was forced Pence t f quickly sign an amendment the would better protect the rights of the gay community. He was a long time backer of conversion therapy.
- Pence blocked the resettlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana — and illegally tried to cut off federal aid to existing refugees.
- Always an outspoken supporter of the coal, industry declaring in his address to the state in 2015 that "Indiana is a pro-coal state," "we must continue to oppose the overreaching schemes of the EPA until we bring their war on coal to end."
- In 2015, Pence signed into law Senate Bill 98, which limited lawsuits against gun and ammunition manufacturers and sellers and retroactively terminated the a pending 1999 lawsuit against gun manufacturers and retailers that allegedly made illegal sales of handgun. Not surprisingly, he as the NRA’s highest rating.
- Under Governor Pence, Indiana has diverted $53 million in the past two years from public school to funding vouchers for private schools, including religious schools, and to charter school programs. He was the first governor to try to repeal Common Core. Pence earned an F on the official NEA legislative report card in eight of his 12 years as a member of Congress.
- Campaign finance records from a 1990 run for Congress show that Pence, then 31, had used political donations to pay the mortgage on his house, his personal credit card bill, groceries, golf tournament fees and car payments for his wife.