Quote:
Originally Posted by Cali Doll
With Trump's gaffe after gaffe after gaffe, how long will Pence tolerate his name being tied to the Orange One?
I can't see Pence staying on the ticket for months...
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If I was was a Governor in deep trouble at home with an election coming up and was tossed a life line, I would sure grab it and hold fast.
And if it came to appear that I was growing more popular than the guy who selected me, I would hold fast with all my might until the very end.
So far, none of Trump's gaffes have rubbed off on Pence at all.
If the No-Trump GOP mutiny continues to grow as time continues to shorten, who's the most likely person to rise to the top position?
Another totally unknown stranger, like McMullin, or a guy who has been around Washington, knows his party's people, and doesn't shoot his mouth off in one attack after another daily? Who is the only Republican under current consideration as an alternative who has won several elections all by himself?
Mike Pence.
He's flawed, but he was nominated. Every day counts more that the last day now. Every day presents more difficulty for the No-Trump people to get their act together.
As Trump goes down, the door opens wider for Pence. He is the simplest alternative solution for the Republican party.
I still remember all the signs I saw in October, 2008. Instead of John McCain's name on the top of them, Sarah Palin's name was topmost.
By that October, Palin, not McCain, held more hope for a Republican victory than the person who chose her. She was as unknown to the voters as Pence was when she was nominated.
Granted, Pence is no Sarah Palin. But in the face of a crushing defeat, Pence could make a defeat more respectably close in November.
At the same time, Pence is actually an experienced Governor with administrative experience, and shows no sign of being an egomaniac. Or no sign of being irresponsible.
While he has controversy surrounding him, his controversies are all ones all the voters are familiar with, and they are all on his beliefs and policies, not on his personality or his personal mental stability.
Any change in candidates will bring defeat. Trump was a long shot from the first, but he prevailed.
Just like George McGovern was a long shot for the Democrats in 1972. McGovern prevailed, too, and like Trump, was holding his own early in that year's race until his choice for VP, Sen. Tom Eagleton, was discovered to have had serious mental depression problems that had required shock treatments to cure.
That sunk McGovern's chances from that moment on. Eagleton quickly resigned from the race, and McGovern chose Sergeant Shriver as Eagleton's replacement, but Shriver, a well known Democrat, wasn't enough to pull the campaign up.
It was a crushing defeat for the Democratic party, and Richard Nixon, an unpopular incumbent, won re-election in a landslide.
That election's parallels to 2016 are numerous.
McGovern was a radical choice, and he was not popular in his party. Several others all were seen as having a better chance at the nomination, but one by one, McGovern out-maneuvered them all, in a time when the Democratic party was as fractured as the Republican party is now.
McGovern won the nomination by becoming the radical solution for the Democratic party's internal problems.
He did well in the early days of the race because he offered a lot of promises to fix some universally very unpopular conditions that prevailed back then, the worst being the Viet Nam war.
Like Obama, Nixon had not succeeded in fully disengaging the United States from that war, and the economy was beginning to tank at the same time. Like Obama, Nixon was very popular with his constituency, and very unpopular with all the others.
Like Obama, Nixon possessed great personal magnetism and effective political skills against an opponent who was lacking in both.
Like Obama, Nixon was a come from behind dark horse winner in 1968 who dominated his party and American politics in his first term. Like Obama, he became the most famous individual in the world at that time, and was highly respected internationally, while less respected at home.
Like Trump, once McGovern was nominated, he got far more attention than Nixon. He was covered like a blanket by the news media, and controversy swirled around in him the same fog it now swirls around Trump.
The far left loved him, and the entire right all hated McGovern from the beginning to the end.
There was only one big difference back then to today's race.
Nixon's mental stability was questioned, not McGovern's. But not to the same degree Trump's mental stability is questioned now. Nixon's mental problems were never at the center of his opposition as a core issue.
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