"But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be
Is always better than nothing
And nothing at all keeps sending him...
Somewhere back in her long ago
Where he can still believe there's a place in her life
Someday, somewhere, she will return"
Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins, "What a Fool Believes," 1978
The GOP doesn't want Pence. It wants Trump.
Pence is a straight-arrow conservative. He hasn't figured out yet that the GOP has changed.
I spoke words of consolation to Mike Pence last October in New Hampshire, when he was one of many Republican candidates challenging Trump. I congratulated him for rejecting Trump's demand that he discard Democratic votes under the pretense that fake electors were equally valid. It wasn't difficult to get up close to talk with him. Republican voters at the convention kept their distance from him.
Theoretically, Pence should have been the perfect post-Trump president. He did every single thing except openly, publicly, and defiantly commit an illegal, unconstitutional act to overthrow an election.
So, wasn't Pence a cleaned-up version of Trump? Trump without the tweets? Trump without Stormy Daniels, E. Jean Carroll, the Epstein vacations, and the "Access Hollywood" video? Trump without the former cabinet officials and White House aides who say Trump is dangerously unfit?
No. Pence thinks the GOP is a conservative party, a pro-immigration party, a party of international engagement, a party of fiscal responsibility, a party that is the heir to Reagan and the Bush presidents. It is not. Trump changed the GOP. Republicans who liked Reagan, Dole, the two Bush presidents, McCain, and Romney are without a party.Pence published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal describing the potential future for the GOP. Unlocked article. He describes a GOP that doesn't exist.
He wrote, "We embraced America’s role as the leader of the free world, and avoid "isolationism and the abandonment of American leadership." No. Trump says that alliances are unnecessary, unnatural, unappreciated, and expensive.
Pence wrote, "Republicans should pledge to deliver better trade deals that increase prosperity, not protectionist tariffs that make products more expensive." No. Trump says we need more and higher tariffs, which will mean that foreign manufacturers will pay our taxes.
Pence wrote, "Republicans should unashamedly recommit to the pro-life cause, which remains the great moral calling of our era." No.Republicans, led by Trump, are retreating from that long tradition. The position is political suicide.
Pence concludes with, "Republicans will win by embracing traditional conservative priorities."
No. The strategy that may well bring Trump to a general election victory is the one that has been overwhelmingly adopted by Republican voters. It is nativist, isolationist populism. Trump began with Obama birtherism, kicked off his campaign saying Mexican immigrants are criminals, added Muslims, added Chinese, added Central Americans, and now in the final weeks of this campaign is vilifying Haitians who are here legally. He has "otherized" non-White Americans and linked their presence to inflation, high housing costs, crime, and job loss. Trump has a consistent, coherent, story about what is wrong with America and how to fix it. Get rid of that criminal vermin and everything will be better. It may well be a winning story.
Pence imagines a Republican party as a party of principle and policy. That is gone. The party is a tribe. It is a mix of ethnicity, religion, tradition, manliness, and patriotism. We -- we normal good Americans -- are under siege, he says. Trump creates liberal tears because he fights Democrats who would poison our tribe with outsiders. Trump's crimes are irrelevant. What matters is that he leads the tribe.
Pence defended the Constitution. He was defending a law. He wasn't defending the important thing, the tribe. That makes him a traitor.
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